And myths and legends are, at bottom, collective metaphors, that is, means of expression that history finds to reveal itself in spite of obligatory silence, and in spite of the obligatory lie.
The myth, to give you an example, the myth of Túpac Amaru . . . truly . . . is such a beautiful one. When they kill the first Túpac Amaru in the plaza of Cusco and behead him, in the same afternoon a myth is born, immediately, an anonymous, inexplicable, mysterious myth, among the multitude who attend his death, who, crying, attend his execution, the myth of the head that is going to find its body, and for two centuries people continue to believe that the head is going to find its body, and it does.
Because two centuries later, exactly two centuries later, rises a cacique [tribal chief] whose name is already forgotten, but who chooses to name himself as a man never to be forgotten because he chooses to take the name of Túpac Amaru.
Túpac Amaru II, the second Túpac Amaru -- or perhaps the first who has returned to the world as was announced, because his head has finally joined his body -- then becomes the protagonist of the most formidable revolution that has ever taken place in the Andean world.
In all ages, at all times, there are myths that, if you will, more than enrich history -- they reveal and express history . . . truly . . . then it seems to me that it is very silly not to pay attention to those myths, as if they were not scientifically possible.
Túpac Amaru, the last leader of the Inca, was executed on 24 September 1572.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Chavez, the Devil, Chomsky, and Us
by Michael Albert
September 26, 2006
What can leftists learn from Chavez’s UN speech and its aftermath? That the U.S. is the world’s most egregious rogue state. We already knew that and, in fact, so does most everyone else. That Bush and Co. engage in repeated acts of amoral, immoral, and antimoral behavior such as a devil would enact, if there was such a thing as a devil. We already knew that too. That the emperor has no morality, integrity, wisdom, or humanity. We knew that as well.
So is there anything in the episode for us? I think there may be.
I suspect many leftists would have been happier had Chavez torn into Bush and U.S. institutions by offering more evidence while employing a less religious spin. Perhaps Chavez could have called Bush Mr. War, or Mr. Danger as he has in the past, and piled on evidence to show how U.S. policies in the world, and grotesque domestic imbalances as well, obstruct desirable income distribution, democratic decision making, and mutual interpersonal and intercommunity respect. Chavez might have given evidence how U.S. elites and key institutions impede living and loving and even survival, from Latin America to Asia and back. He might have said that George W. Bush, as the current master purveyor of the most recent violations by the U.S., is, in effect, doing the work of a devil – because he is the spawn of a devilish system. And I suspect many leftists would have probably been happier had Chavez added chapter and verse evidence for his assertions, though I suspect time limits precluded that.
But, hey, we can’t always get exactly what we want. And more, the dramatic “smelling of sulfur formulation” that Chavez used may have been exactly what got the sentiment in any form at all in front of millions of readers and viewers. The pundits wanted to use Chavez’s words to discredit him – but, in doing so, they put his claim before hundreds of millions of people. Perhaps without the dramatic formulation, we would have heard nearly nothing.
My guess is that Chavez treated the event as he does pretty much all his encounters. He said what he thought. He gave it a passionate, aesthetic, and humorous edge. He calculated that forthrightness would accomplish more than it cost. Content-wise, the speech was typical Chavez, even if most hadn’t heard him saying such things before, due to having not heard him say anything before. Here is Chavez commenting on Bush last March, for example, in a televised Venezuelan address: "You are an ignoramus, you are a burro, Mr. Danger ... or to say it to you in my bad English, you are a donkey, Mr. Danger. You are a donkey, Mr. George W. Bush. You are a coward, a killer, a genocider, an alcoholic, a drunk, a liar, an immoral person, Mr. Danger. You are the worst, Mr. Danger. The worst of this planet."
The cost of Chavez’s more recent and far more global forthrightness about Bush is dismissal of Chavez as a crazy lunatic by many people who already felt that way but were restrained in saying so, and by some people swayed by media ridicule of him, who had had no prior opinion.
The gain of Chavez’s more recent and far more global forthrightness about Bush is establishing that one can say the truth about the U.S. and less importantly about George Bush, and showing that doing so is in accord not only with truth but also with integrity. It is providing an example for others to be inspired by and act on. What is poison in elite eyes can be vitamins for us, and vice versa.
In that respect, what Chavez did reminds me a little of what Abbie Hoffman and some others did in the U.S. to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, known more familiarly as HUAC, decades ago. Abbie and some others aggressively and dismissively ridiculed HUAC as beneath contempt and unworthy of respect. They laughed at obeying it and via their dramatic stance they moved the prevalent attitude toward HUAC from being primarily fear and trembling to being primarily disdain and dissent. Chavez tried something similar, I think. He voiced what others, even others in the room at the UN, also knew but kept quiet about. He hoped, I assume, that others would take strength and begin to voice their needs and insights too.
Bush is a vengeful, greedy, violent, but even more so, obedient thug. Yes, obedient, as in Bush obeys the dictates of the system he has climbed and now administers for the rich and powerful. Bush perfectly exemplifies the adage that in capitalism “garbage rises.” My guess is that Chavez felt that the benefits of standing up to the U.S. and its most elite garbage outweighs the costs of seeming to many people to be an extremist from Mars. So was Chavez right? Did the benefits outweigh the debits?
My country, the United States, exists beneath a blanket of disorienting and misleading media madness. It endures a climate of paralyzing and pervasive fear. It encompasses a deeply inculcated hopelessness born of educational and cultural institutions that snuff out communication of dissenting beliefs elevating instead pap and pablum. It suffers a life-draining anti-sociality produced by markets that reward callousness and punish solidarity. Garbage rises in the U.S. because nice guys finish last. And amidst all this, for anyone to tell the full truth, and even more so for anyone to display the appropriate levels of passionate anger that the full truth warrants, makes that person appear to be Martian, appear to be psychotic, appear to be irrelevant, and Chavez wants to reverse that context.
Did Chavez fall short of what could be accomplished on that score with one speech? I am not at all sure he did. But if he did, if the price of Chavez’s speech in delegitimating his own credibility in certain circles was greater than the gain in delegitimating greed and violence and in freeing people in very different circles from blind and uncritical obedience and fear, whose fault would that be?
Should we blame the one messenger who spoke up? Or should we blame the millions of messengers who know the same substance as Chavez, but hold their tongues?
There is a world class bully, Bush. He represents a class of rich and powerful “masters of the universe.” He administers their system of gross inequality. He expands the competitive market hostility they thrive on. He fosters the mental passivity they rely on. He abets the lifelong coercion they utilize. He epitomizes the ubiquitous crassness and commercialism they profit off. He lies to shield their true purposes. He throws bombs far and wide to defend and enlarge their empire. Of course irritating the bully and the system he shills for can unleash nasty behavior. Of course, for a time, in the ensuing onslaught, verbally assaulting the bully can diminish the dissident’s credibility, at least in some circles. It might even boost the bully a bit, in some quarters.
Likewise, when there is a climate of subservient obedience to a bully, as we now endure in the U.S., when the bully’s climate people feel that to tell the truth about him and his system is uncivil, and when the bully’s climate overwhelmingly castigates honesty and ridicules passion, then of course being passionately honest will be castigated and ridiculed and at least in part make the truth teller look deviant.
So, if that’s the risk, what is the solution? Should we forego truth telling? Or should we tell more truth? Should we coddle our likely enemies. Or should we organize and empower our likely friends?
Chavez needs allies, but not ones who say, hey, Chavez is an okay guy, even if a little over the top. Chavez needs allies who stand up to imperialism and injustice in all its forms be counted like him, even right up over the top, but allies who also bring to Chavez criticisms and ideas that run contrary to his own thinking and doing. Chavez embracing Admadinenjad was bad news. His suggestions, in other contexts, that the Venezuelan constitution be amended to allow him to rule longer are bad news. Truth to him, too. But at that UN Chavez wasn’t talking mainly to the people sitting in front of him in the UN with his speech. He was talking to people throughout the U.S. and throughout the world, saying, in essence, it is okay to rebel. And it is okay. And we ought to do it.
So that was one lesson. When you revile elites your effectiveness depends less on your particular words than on how many other people are willing to do as much or more than you. Chavez thinks in terms of winning massive change. Most people on the left think in terms of holding off calamities. The contrast is stark and at the heart of the recent incidents. We can learn from his attitude, I think.
Chavez waved around Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival. I think there are lessons in that, too, even for us, even though we already know Chomsky’s work. First off, a person, even one that has great social advantages, can humbly aid others. You can get up and say to others, hey, this book, video, set of ideas, or organization is worthy of your time. You can use whatever avenues exist for you, whether it be access to your family or friends, or to your schoolmates or workmates, or to your local media, or even to larger mass media, or even to the whole world, to reach out with advice and pointers that you think are worthy. And you should do that. We all should do that. But we generally don’t. I suspect we are embarrassed to do it. Chavez probably wouldn’t even comprehend that. Just as he had reviled Bush before, he had celebrated Chomsky before too, over and over, with little effect. This guy Chavez tries and tries again. He loses, he loses, he loses, he wins.
I would guess that Chavez didn’t think to himself, they will revile me in their columns and commentaries, so I better not rip into Bush and celebrate Chomsky. The ensuing ridicule might reduce my stature, I better avoid it. To rip Bush and celebrate Chomsky will look strange, I better avoid it. If I do that I will be giving time to elevating someone else, and not myself, and I better avoid it. I will be displaying anger and passion, and that will brand me as uncivil and improper, it will label me as undignified and even juvenile, and I better avoid it. How many of us think like that, how often, is a question worth considering.
Instead, I suspect Chavez thought, Chomsky’s work deserves and needs to be more widely addressed. It affected me. It needs to affect others. I will try to push it into people’s awareness using all the means at my disposal to do so, which, indeed, he has been doing, though with much less success, for some time now. Of course, we can’t all push an author, a book, an organization, or an idea, and have it jump into international, domestic, or local prominence, whether on our first, fifth, or tenth try. We are not all heads of a dynamic country. We don’t all have a giant stage, or often even a large stage, or even any stage at all, from which to sing our songs. But we can still do our part, wherever we may be. And the fact is, we who know so much often don’t do our part. We often don’t point out sources of ideas and discuss them with our workmates, schoolmates, and families at every opportunity. If we have audiences for our work, again we don’t use our writing, talks, and other products to promote valuable work by others beyond ourselves. Why is that? Sometimes we are afraid of reprisals. Sometimes we are afraid of looking silly. Sometimes we just don’t want to do it because it isn’t our thing. Cheerleading and recommending, that’s not my thing. I doubt it will work. I won’t bother trying. Then our foretelling of failure is fulfilled. Well, we need to get over all that.
Again, I think the difference between Chavez and most others even on the left is that Chavez is seeking to win, and we are instead seeking, as often as not, to avoid alienating pundits or to even appeal to them. We are seeking to avoid annoying anyone we like, or anyone we might like, or who might like us. We are seeking to avoid looking odd to anyone, or to avoid making a mistake, or to avoid seeming shrill and angry, or self serving, or passionate. And we need to transcend all that.
I think what made Chavez seem so peculiar to so many people is that what he did was, in fact, incredibly peculiar. To stand up to the classist, racist, sexist, authoritarian leader of the U.S. and to mince no words reviling his immorality, was indeed incredibly peculiar. So let’s all stand up to power and privilege and take the stigma out of doing so. It is part of removing the smell of sulfur from the air.
And, at the opposite pole, Chavez celebrated and openly and aggressively aided an anti classist, anti racist, anti sexist, and anti authoritarian set of ideas and their author. And that too was peculiar. And we all ought to be doing that too, for lots of able authors and worthy ideas. Indeed, we should do it so much that solidaritous movement building behavior comes to be typical, rather than seeming Martian. We should do it so much and so openly that we move from telling the truth to feeling about the truth the way a caring and sentient soul ought to feel about it, and finally to acting on the truth and on our passionate feelings in accord with wide human interests and in pursuit of compelling and worthy aims. To hell with the dictates of markets and pundits alike.
September 26, 2006
What can leftists learn from Chavez’s UN speech and its aftermath? That the U.S. is the world’s most egregious rogue state. We already knew that and, in fact, so does most everyone else. That Bush and Co. engage in repeated acts of amoral, immoral, and antimoral behavior such as a devil would enact, if there was such a thing as a devil. We already knew that too. That the emperor has no morality, integrity, wisdom, or humanity. We knew that as well.
So is there anything in the episode for us? I think there may be.
I suspect many leftists would have been happier had Chavez torn into Bush and U.S. institutions by offering more evidence while employing a less religious spin. Perhaps Chavez could have called Bush Mr. War, or Mr. Danger as he has in the past, and piled on evidence to show how U.S. policies in the world, and grotesque domestic imbalances as well, obstruct desirable income distribution, democratic decision making, and mutual interpersonal and intercommunity respect. Chavez might have given evidence how U.S. elites and key institutions impede living and loving and even survival, from Latin America to Asia and back. He might have said that George W. Bush, as the current master purveyor of the most recent violations by the U.S., is, in effect, doing the work of a devil – because he is the spawn of a devilish system. And I suspect many leftists would have probably been happier had Chavez added chapter and verse evidence for his assertions, though I suspect time limits precluded that.
But, hey, we can’t always get exactly what we want. And more, the dramatic “smelling of sulfur formulation” that Chavez used may have been exactly what got the sentiment in any form at all in front of millions of readers and viewers. The pundits wanted to use Chavez’s words to discredit him – but, in doing so, they put his claim before hundreds of millions of people. Perhaps without the dramatic formulation, we would have heard nearly nothing.
My guess is that Chavez treated the event as he does pretty much all his encounters. He said what he thought. He gave it a passionate, aesthetic, and humorous edge. He calculated that forthrightness would accomplish more than it cost. Content-wise, the speech was typical Chavez, even if most hadn’t heard him saying such things before, due to having not heard him say anything before. Here is Chavez commenting on Bush last March, for example, in a televised Venezuelan address: "You are an ignoramus, you are a burro, Mr. Danger ... or to say it to you in my bad English, you are a donkey, Mr. Danger. You are a donkey, Mr. George W. Bush. You are a coward, a killer, a genocider, an alcoholic, a drunk, a liar, an immoral person, Mr. Danger. You are the worst, Mr. Danger. The worst of this planet."
The cost of Chavez’s more recent and far more global forthrightness about Bush is dismissal of Chavez as a crazy lunatic by many people who already felt that way but were restrained in saying so, and by some people swayed by media ridicule of him, who had had no prior opinion.
The gain of Chavez’s more recent and far more global forthrightness about Bush is establishing that one can say the truth about the U.S. and less importantly about George Bush, and showing that doing so is in accord not only with truth but also with integrity. It is providing an example for others to be inspired by and act on. What is poison in elite eyes can be vitamins for us, and vice versa.
In that respect, what Chavez did reminds me a little of what Abbie Hoffman and some others did in the U.S. to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, known more familiarly as HUAC, decades ago. Abbie and some others aggressively and dismissively ridiculed HUAC as beneath contempt and unworthy of respect. They laughed at obeying it and via their dramatic stance they moved the prevalent attitude toward HUAC from being primarily fear and trembling to being primarily disdain and dissent. Chavez tried something similar, I think. He voiced what others, even others in the room at the UN, also knew but kept quiet about. He hoped, I assume, that others would take strength and begin to voice their needs and insights too.
Bush is a vengeful, greedy, violent, but even more so, obedient thug. Yes, obedient, as in Bush obeys the dictates of the system he has climbed and now administers for the rich and powerful. Bush perfectly exemplifies the adage that in capitalism “garbage rises.” My guess is that Chavez felt that the benefits of standing up to the U.S. and its most elite garbage outweighs the costs of seeming to many people to be an extremist from Mars. So was Chavez right? Did the benefits outweigh the debits?
My country, the United States, exists beneath a blanket of disorienting and misleading media madness. It endures a climate of paralyzing and pervasive fear. It encompasses a deeply inculcated hopelessness born of educational and cultural institutions that snuff out communication of dissenting beliefs elevating instead pap and pablum. It suffers a life-draining anti-sociality produced by markets that reward callousness and punish solidarity. Garbage rises in the U.S. because nice guys finish last. And amidst all this, for anyone to tell the full truth, and even more so for anyone to display the appropriate levels of passionate anger that the full truth warrants, makes that person appear to be Martian, appear to be psychotic, appear to be irrelevant, and Chavez wants to reverse that context.
Did Chavez fall short of what could be accomplished on that score with one speech? I am not at all sure he did. But if he did, if the price of Chavez’s speech in delegitimating his own credibility in certain circles was greater than the gain in delegitimating greed and violence and in freeing people in very different circles from blind and uncritical obedience and fear, whose fault would that be?
Should we blame the one messenger who spoke up? Or should we blame the millions of messengers who know the same substance as Chavez, but hold their tongues?
There is a world class bully, Bush. He represents a class of rich and powerful “masters of the universe.” He administers their system of gross inequality. He expands the competitive market hostility they thrive on. He fosters the mental passivity they rely on. He abets the lifelong coercion they utilize. He epitomizes the ubiquitous crassness and commercialism they profit off. He lies to shield their true purposes. He throws bombs far and wide to defend and enlarge their empire. Of course irritating the bully and the system he shills for can unleash nasty behavior. Of course, for a time, in the ensuing onslaught, verbally assaulting the bully can diminish the dissident’s credibility, at least in some circles. It might even boost the bully a bit, in some quarters.
Likewise, when there is a climate of subservient obedience to a bully, as we now endure in the U.S., when the bully’s climate people feel that to tell the truth about him and his system is uncivil, and when the bully’s climate overwhelmingly castigates honesty and ridicules passion, then of course being passionately honest will be castigated and ridiculed and at least in part make the truth teller look deviant.
So, if that’s the risk, what is the solution? Should we forego truth telling? Or should we tell more truth? Should we coddle our likely enemies. Or should we organize and empower our likely friends?
Chavez needs allies, but not ones who say, hey, Chavez is an okay guy, even if a little over the top. Chavez needs allies who stand up to imperialism and injustice in all its forms be counted like him, even right up over the top, but allies who also bring to Chavez criticisms and ideas that run contrary to his own thinking and doing. Chavez embracing Admadinenjad was bad news. His suggestions, in other contexts, that the Venezuelan constitution be amended to allow him to rule longer are bad news. Truth to him, too. But at that UN Chavez wasn’t talking mainly to the people sitting in front of him in the UN with his speech. He was talking to people throughout the U.S. and throughout the world, saying, in essence, it is okay to rebel. And it is okay. And we ought to do it.
So that was one lesson. When you revile elites your effectiveness depends less on your particular words than on how many other people are willing to do as much or more than you. Chavez thinks in terms of winning massive change. Most people on the left think in terms of holding off calamities. The contrast is stark and at the heart of the recent incidents. We can learn from his attitude, I think.
Chavez waved around Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival. I think there are lessons in that, too, even for us, even though we already know Chomsky’s work. First off, a person, even one that has great social advantages, can humbly aid others. You can get up and say to others, hey, this book, video, set of ideas, or organization is worthy of your time. You can use whatever avenues exist for you, whether it be access to your family or friends, or to your schoolmates or workmates, or to your local media, or even to larger mass media, or even to the whole world, to reach out with advice and pointers that you think are worthy. And you should do that. We all should do that. But we generally don’t. I suspect we are embarrassed to do it. Chavez probably wouldn’t even comprehend that. Just as he had reviled Bush before, he had celebrated Chomsky before too, over and over, with little effect. This guy Chavez tries and tries again. He loses, he loses, he loses, he wins.
I would guess that Chavez didn’t think to himself, they will revile me in their columns and commentaries, so I better not rip into Bush and celebrate Chomsky. The ensuing ridicule might reduce my stature, I better avoid it. To rip Bush and celebrate Chomsky will look strange, I better avoid it. If I do that I will be giving time to elevating someone else, and not myself, and I better avoid it. I will be displaying anger and passion, and that will brand me as uncivil and improper, it will label me as undignified and even juvenile, and I better avoid it. How many of us think like that, how often, is a question worth considering.
Instead, I suspect Chavez thought, Chomsky’s work deserves and needs to be more widely addressed. It affected me. It needs to affect others. I will try to push it into people’s awareness using all the means at my disposal to do so, which, indeed, he has been doing, though with much less success, for some time now. Of course, we can’t all push an author, a book, an organization, or an idea, and have it jump into international, domestic, or local prominence, whether on our first, fifth, or tenth try. We are not all heads of a dynamic country. We don’t all have a giant stage, or often even a large stage, or even any stage at all, from which to sing our songs. But we can still do our part, wherever we may be. And the fact is, we who know so much often don’t do our part. We often don’t point out sources of ideas and discuss them with our workmates, schoolmates, and families at every opportunity. If we have audiences for our work, again we don’t use our writing, talks, and other products to promote valuable work by others beyond ourselves. Why is that? Sometimes we are afraid of reprisals. Sometimes we are afraid of looking silly. Sometimes we just don’t want to do it because it isn’t our thing. Cheerleading and recommending, that’s not my thing. I doubt it will work. I won’t bother trying. Then our foretelling of failure is fulfilled. Well, we need to get over all that.
Again, I think the difference between Chavez and most others even on the left is that Chavez is seeking to win, and we are instead seeking, as often as not, to avoid alienating pundits or to even appeal to them. We are seeking to avoid annoying anyone we like, or anyone we might like, or who might like us. We are seeking to avoid looking odd to anyone, or to avoid making a mistake, or to avoid seeming shrill and angry, or self serving, or passionate. And we need to transcend all that.
I think what made Chavez seem so peculiar to so many people is that what he did was, in fact, incredibly peculiar. To stand up to the classist, racist, sexist, authoritarian leader of the U.S. and to mince no words reviling his immorality, was indeed incredibly peculiar. So let’s all stand up to power and privilege and take the stigma out of doing so. It is part of removing the smell of sulfur from the air.
And, at the opposite pole, Chavez celebrated and openly and aggressively aided an anti classist, anti racist, anti sexist, and anti authoritarian set of ideas and their author. And that too was peculiar. And we all ought to be doing that too, for lots of able authors and worthy ideas. Indeed, we should do it so much that solidaritous movement building behavior comes to be typical, rather than seeming Martian. We should do it so much and so openly that we move from telling the truth to feeling about the truth the way a caring and sentient soul ought to feel about it, and finally to acting on the truth and on our passionate feelings in accord with wide human interests and in pursuit of compelling and worthy aims. To hell with the dictates of markets and pundits alike.
Keith Olbermann's Special Comment regarding the Clinton Interview- 9/25/06
Keith Olbermann: "Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit. Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration."
Olbermann has cut the shrub a new asshole.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Is Bush A Devil?
By: Charles Hardy - 21st Century Socialism.com
During a recent visit to the United States, I heard a woman say that she felt Vice President Dick Cheney was an evil man. Her sister, with a different view of the world situation, said she felt all Arabs were evil. For the past few years President George W. Bush has been speaking of an axis of evil in the world. And, just a few days ago, President Chávez of Venezuela said President Bush is a devil. Let me first of all share my personal opinion on the matter of evil. I don’t believe there are evil people. There are people who do bad things (I don’t like the word “evil”), but that doesn’t make them bad. I have done bad things in my life. Everyone has. That doesn’t make us bad people.
Secondly, I have a prejudice against identifying people with evil and the devil. I once asked a priest who was tortured in Argentina, how one human being could torture another. He replied that his torturers denied that he was human. His words as I recall them: “They said I was a devil dressed as a priest and as such they could do whatever they wanted to do with me.”
Thirdly, I don’t like name-calling. I was taught in high school that it was the lowest form of argument. It can hurt; it can bring laughter; but it doesn’t contribute to a fair discussion of ideas.
Having said this, I would like to present my analysis of the repercussions resulting from Chávez’s address in the United Nations.
Within Venezuela, the reactions have been mixed. Those who oppose Chávez see it as another strike against him as president. But among those who support him, I have found no one so far who felt he did wrong with his comments.
I watched Chávez’s speech in the office of a public building. The secretaries were all cheering Chávez as he spoke the words. Later, a respected lawyer told me he didn’t see any difference between Bush’s designating countries and their leaders as part of the “axis of evil” and Chávez’s calling Bush a devil. A labor leader felt the talk was excellent and necessary. A radio commentator said Chávez voiced what many world leaders would like to say but don’t have the courage to do so. The most hesitant comment was from a taxi driver who said it was ok that Chávez made the comparison once in the U.N., but that he shouldn’t have continued repeating the idea.
The Sunday 24 September issue of the Caracas daily, Ultimas Noticias, had a cartoon showing the devil sitting in front of a television set watching Chávez’s U.N. speech. The devil is saying, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Chávez but Bush is a lot worse than I am. In addition the odor he leaves behind is not that of sulfur but of gun power.”
Within the United States, I have no idea how people are reacting because I haven’t had access to the Internet these days and I don’t trust the major news sources anyway. One fellow journalist who did check out the reporting said that it was unfortunate that the articles were concentrating on Chávez’s devil remark and not on the rest of the message he delivered.
In any case, I do think it is time that people in the United States wake up to the fact that Chávez simply voiced what many people in the world think about their president. Two or three years ago I was on an airplane passing through Mexico City and received from the airline a major Mexican daily. That day it carried a long editorial comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. One may agree or disagree with the comparison, but it is important that U.S. citizens are aware of it. I don’t know if many Germans in the 30s and 40s knew what was being said about Hitler and their country in other parts of the world. U.S. citizens today do not have that excuse. Many, many people in the world are having difficulties justifying the massive killing of several thousand innocent people because a few thousand people died in the Twin Towers. There is some similarity with Israel’s killing of Lebanese citizens because two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, another action the U.S. supported.
It is also important for U.S. citizens to realize that their leaders have not been kind in their words about Chávez. Major government spokespersons have called Chávez a hyena and a pied piper. Also, there is no question that the U.S. government was happy when the 2002 coup against him took place, and may have even helped finance it.
Greatest Enemy
The time has come for U.S. citizens to wake up and realize that they are becoming hated because of the policies of their leaders. As Chávez pointed out, the greatest enemy that the U.S. people have is their own government.
How will Chávez’s remarks affect his position in the world and his relation with other world leaders? I don’t think what he said will hurt him. Venezuela would like a seat in the UN Security Council. The vote will be in secret. I think they will easily win it. If that happens, it will be a huge victory for Chávez and a horrible defeat for the Bush administration. But if Venezuela doesn’t win it, it will show that the U.S. might still be politically more powerful than Venezuela. So, what’s news in that?
I would expect other world leaders, friends of Chávez, to tell him he shouldn’t say things like he did in public forums — even though they feel likewise. Even if they don’t have similar feelings, I don’t think they will stop supporting him. My brother once called another driver, who cut in front of my brother’s car, an “asshole.” I wouldn’t have used such a word, but it didn’t stop me from loving my brother.
Hugo Chávez is Hugo Chávez. Upon his return to Venezuela, I heard him tell a group of people that he didn’t know exactly what he was going to say until he said it. But he also said that he doesn’t take back what he said.
Four years ago I wrote that one of Chávez’s major problems as a politician is that he says what he thinks. Many people see that as being honest—and love him for it. Others see it as being inept and stupid—and hate him for it. But Hugo is Hugo. I don’t expect him to change.
Let me add one final thought. When I shared what I just wrote with a friend, he made an important distinction, which I share, between the attitudes of President Chávez and that of President Bush. He said that when Chávez spoke of Bush as a devil, he was joking. He entered the podium of the General Assembly saying it smelled of sulfur. He made the Sign of the Cross, a common Venezuelan practice not only to show one’s Catholic faith but also to ward off evil spirits. It is done seriously, but often it is done in jest. I know a person who is always making it in front of friends and saying, “Away from me Satan.”
But when Bush speaks of the “axis of evil,” he is deadly serious, and I put emphasis on the word “deadly.” It is my belief that Chávez shares my feeling that Bush is doing bad (evil, if you prefer the word) things. I don’t believe he sees him as a devil in reality. Not so with President Bush. His words seem to reflect a fundamentalist Christian attitude that the devil has taken possession of some people. They must therefore be wiped out. Too bad if others happen to be in the way, but the evil ones must be eliminated. Therein lies the danger for the world—and for you and me if we should fall into that category for the U.S. government.
Chávez wants to wipe out imperialism. He doesn’t see the need to kill those who are imperialists. Bush says he wants to eliminate terrorism. His only solution seems to be to kill those who are classified as terrorists. I repeat: therein lies the danger for the world — and for you and for me.
© Charles Hardy
Charles Hardy is a freelance writer and former Catholic priest who has lived in Venezuela for over twenty years. He is author of a forthcoming book on Venezuela from Curbstone Press (http://www.curbstone.org) . His personal blog is Cowboy in Caracas (http://www.cowboyincaracas.com) and he can be reached through cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com
During a recent visit to the United States, I heard a woman say that she felt Vice President Dick Cheney was an evil man. Her sister, with a different view of the world situation, said she felt all Arabs were evil. For the past few years President George W. Bush has been speaking of an axis of evil in the world. And, just a few days ago, President Chávez of Venezuela said President Bush is a devil. Let me first of all share my personal opinion on the matter of evil. I don’t believe there are evil people. There are people who do bad things (I don’t like the word “evil”), but that doesn’t make them bad. I have done bad things in my life. Everyone has. That doesn’t make us bad people.
Secondly, I have a prejudice against identifying people with evil and the devil. I once asked a priest who was tortured in Argentina, how one human being could torture another. He replied that his torturers denied that he was human. His words as I recall them: “They said I was a devil dressed as a priest and as such they could do whatever they wanted to do with me.”
Thirdly, I don’t like name-calling. I was taught in high school that it was the lowest form of argument. It can hurt; it can bring laughter; but it doesn’t contribute to a fair discussion of ideas.
Having said this, I would like to present my analysis of the repercussions resulting from Chávez’s address in the United Nations.
Within Venezuela, the reactions have been mixed. Those who oppose Chávez see it as another strike against him as president. But among those who support him, I have found no one so far who felt he did wrong with his comments.
I watched Chávez’s speech in the office of a public building. The secretaries were all cheering Chávez as he spoke the words. Later, a respected lawyer told me he didn’t see any difference between Bush’s designating countries and their leaders as part of the “axis of evil” and Chávez’s calling Bush a devil. A labor leader felt the talk was excellent and necessary. A radio commentator said Chávez voiced what many world leaders would like to say but don’t have the courage to do so. The most hesitant comment was from a taxi driver who said it was ok that Chávez made the comparison once in the U.N., but that he shouldn’t have continued repeating the idea.
The Sunday 24 September issue of the Caracas daily, Ultimas Noticias, had a cartoon showing the devil sitting in front of a television set watching Chávez’s U.N. speech. The devil is saying, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Chávez but Bush is a lot worse than I am. In addition the odor he leaves behind is not that of sulfur but of gun power.”
Within the United States, I have no idea how people are reacting because I haven’t had access to the Internet these days and I don’t trust the major news sources anyway. One fellow journalist who did check out the reporting said that it was unfortunate that the articles were concentrating on Chávez’s devil remark and not on the rest of the message he delivered.
In any case, I do think it is time that people in the United States wake up to the fact that Chávez simply voiced what many people in the world think about their president. Two or three years ago I was on an airplane passing through Mexico City and received from the airline a major Mexican daily. That day it carried a long editorial comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. One may agree or disagree with the comparison, but it is important that U.S. citizens are aware of it. I don’t know if many Germans in the 30s and 40s knew what was being said about Hitler and their country in other parts of the world. U.S. citizens today do not have that excuse. Many, many people in the world are having difficulties justifying the massive killing of several thousand innocent people because a few thousand people died in the Twin Towers. There is some similarity with Israel’s killing of Lebanese citizens because two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, another action the U.S. supported.
It is also important for U.S. citizens to realize that their leaders have not been kind in their words about Chávez. Major government spokespersons have called Chávez a hyena and a pied piper. Also, there is no question that the U.S. government was happy when the 2002 coup against him took place, and may have even helped finance it.
Greatest Enemy
The time has come for U.S. citizens to wake up and realize that they are becoming hated because of the policies of their leaders. As Chávez pointed out, the greatest enemy that the U.S. people have is their own government.
How will Chávez’s remarks affect his position in the world and his relation with other world leaders? I don’t think what he said will hurt him. Venezuela would like a seat in the UN Security Council. The vote will be in secret. I think they will easily win it. If that happens, it will be a huge victory for Chávez and a horrible defeat for the Bush administration. But if Venezuela doesn’t win it, it will show that the U.S. might still be politically more powerful than Venezuela. So, what’s news in that?
I would expect other world leaders, friends of Chávez, to tell him he shouldn’t say things like he did in public forums — even though they feel likewise. Even if they don’t have similar feelings, I don’t think they will stop supporting him. My brother once called another driver, who cut in front of my brother’s car, an “asshole.” I wouldn’t have used such a word, but it didn’t stop me from loving my brother.
Hugo Chávez is Hugo Chávez. Upon his return to Venezuela, I heard him tell a group of people that he didn’t know exactly what he was going to say until he said it. But he also said that he doesn’t take back what he said.
Four years ago I wrote that one of Chávez’s major problems as a politician is that he says what he thinks. Many people see that as being honest—and love him for it. Others see it as being inept and stupid—and hate him for it. But Hugo is Hugo. I don’t expect him to change.
Let me add one final thought. When I shared what I just wrote with a friend, he made an important distinction, which I share, between the attitudes of President Chávez and that of President Bush. He said that when Chávez spoke of Bush as a devil, he was joking. He entered the podium of the General Assembly saying it smelled of sulfur. He made the Sign of the Cross, a common Venezuelan practice not only to show one’s Catholic faith but also to ward off evil spirits. It is done seriously, but often it is done in jest. I know a person who is always making it in front of friends and saying, “Away from me Satan.”
But when Bush speaks of the “axis of evil,” he is deadly serious, and I put emphasis on the word “deadly.” It is my belief that Chávez shares my feeling that Bush is doing bad (evil, if you prefer the word) things. I don’t believe he sees him as a devil in reality. Not so with President Bush. His words seem to reflect a fundamentalist Christian attitude that the devil has taken possession of some people. They must therefore be wiped out. Too bad if others happen to be in the way, but the evil ones must be eliminated. Therein lies the danger for the world—and for you and me if we should fall into that category for the U.S. government.
Chávez wants to wipe out imperialism. He doesn’t see the need to kill those who are imperialists. Bush says he wants to eliminate terrorism. His only solution seems to be to kill those who are classified as terrorists. I repeat: therein lies the danger for the world — and for you and for me.
© Charles Hardy
Charles Hardy is a freelance writer and former Catholic priest who has lived in Venezuela for over twenty years. He is author of a forthcoming book on Venezuela from Curbstone Press (http://www.curbstone.org) . His personal blog is Cowboy in Caracas (http://www.cowboyincaracas.com) and he can be reached through cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com
The Sound & The Fury of Hugo Chavez
By: Tim Padgett - Time Magazine
TIME: Why do you attack President George W. Bush with such jolting language?
CHAVEZ: I believe words have great weight, and I want people to know exactly what I mean. I'm not attacking President Bush; I'm simply counterattacking. Bush has been attacking the world, and not just with words--with bombs. When I say these things I believe I'm speaking for many people, because they too believe this moment is our opportunity to stop the threat of a U.S. empire that uses the U.N. to justify its aggression against half the world. In Bush's speech to the U.N., he sounded as if he wants to be master of the world. I changed my original speech after reading his.
TIME: But doesn't your rhetoric--referring to Bush, for example, as an "alcoholic"--risk alienating potential allies?
CHAVEZ: First of all, Bush has called me worse: tyrant, populist dictator, drug trafficker, to name a few. I was simply telling a truth that people should know about this President, a man with gigantic power.
TIME: Is all of this mostly for domestic consumption back in Venezuela?
CHAVEZ: No. American author Noam Chomsky in his book [Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance] talks of two superpowers in today's world--one is the U.S., which aggressively wants to dominate the world, and the other is global public opinion. I don't consider what I'm saying personal attacks on President Bush--I want to wake up U.S. and global public opinion about him.
TIME: Do your feelings about Bush reflect your feelings toward America in general?
CHAVEZ: No. I revere America as the nation of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Mark Twain--who was a great anti-imperialist, who opposed U.S. adventurism in the Spanish-American War.
TIME: You often speak of the link between U.S. foreign policy and its appetite for oil.
CHAVEZ: Bush wanted Iraq's oil, and I believe he wants Venezuela's oil. The blame for high oil prices lies in the consumer model of the U.S. Its reckless oil consumption is a form of suicide.
TIME: You said recently that you believe the "BolÃvar Doctrine is finally replacing the Monroe Doctrine" on your watch. Why?
CHAVEZ: For two centuries in this hemisphere we've experienced a confrontation between two theses--America's Monroe Doctrine, which says the U.S. should exercise hegemony over all the other republics, and the doctrine of Simón BolÃvar, which envisioned a great South American republic as a counterbalance. Bush has spread the Monroe thesis globally, to make the U.S. the police of the world--if you're not with us, he says, you're against us. We're simply doing the same now with the BolÃvar thesis--a doctrine of more equality and autonomy among nations, more equilibrium of power.
TIME: What's the difference between your "socialism for the 21st century" and past attempts to fix the region's economic inequality?
CHAVEZ: When I was released from prison [in 1994] and began my political life, I naively took as a reference point Tony Blair's proposal for a "third way" between capitalism and socialism--capitalism with a human face. Not anymore. After seeing the failure of Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think a third way is possible. Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ--who I think was the first socialist--only socialism can really create a genuine society.
TIME: Yet one slogan of your re-election campaign is "Against Chávez, Against the People." You also seem to have taken on a with-me-or-against-me stance.
CHAVEZ: The difference is ethics and morals. We're not threatening anyone. That slogan is simply a call for conscious reflection on national unity. We're not going to enforce it by bombing or invading anyone.
TIME: Critics have noted that while you were free to slam President Bush on U.S. soil, a new defamation law in Venezuela makes people subject to criminal prosecution for slander against officials like you.
CHAVEZ: They need to visit Venezuela. If you think Chávez is intimidating free expression, just watch television there--my God, devil is the least of things the opposition is allowed to call me on the air.
TIME: Could Venezuela play an interlocutor role between Iran and the U.S.? You and President Bush have some things in common--you both hail from cowboy country and enjoy Clint Eastwood movies.
CHAVEZ: I like Danny Glover movies better. But I don't believe there is anyone who can play the interlocutor with a leader who considers himself master of the world, as Bush does. Before the 2002 coup attempt against me--which Bush backed--various Presidents around the world tried to be interlocutors between Bush and Chávez. I said sure, please give him my regards. But they found it a waste of time with this U.S. President. I could talk to Clinton, but not Bush.
TIME: Why do you attack President George W. Bush with such jolting language?
CHAVEZ: I believe words have great weight, and I want people to know exactly what I mean. I'm not attacking President Bush; I'm simply counterattacking. Bush has been attacking the world, and not just with words--with bombs. When I say these things I believe I'm speaking for many people, because they too believe this moment is our opportunity to stop the threat of a U.S. empire that uses the U.N. to justify its aggression against half the world. In Bush's speech to the U.N., he sounded as if he wants to be master of the world. I changed my original speech after reading his.
TIME: But doesn't your rhetoric--referring to Bush, for example, as an "alcoholic"--risk alienating potential allies?
CHAVEZ: First of all, Bush has called me worse: tyrant, populist dictator, drug trafficker, to name a few. I was simply telling a truth that people should know about this President, a man with gigantic power.
TIME: Is all of this mostly for domestic consumption back in Venezuela?
CHAVEZ: No. American author Noam Chomsky in his book [Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance] talks of two superpowers in today's world--one is the U.S., which aggressively wants to dominate the world, and the other is global public opinion. I don't consider what I'm saying personal attacks on President Bush--I want to wake up U.S. and global public opinion about him.
TIME: Do your feelings about Bush reflect your feelings toward America in general?
CHAVEZ: No. I revere America as the nation of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Mark Twain--who was a great anti-imperialist, who opposed U.S. adventurism in the Spanish-American War.
TIME: You often speak of the link between U.S. foreign policy and its appetite for oil.
CHAVEZ: Bush wanted Iraq's oil, and I believe he wants Venezuela's oil. The blame for high oil prices lies in the consumer model of the U.S. Its reckless oil consumption is a form of suicide.
TIME: You said recently that you believe the "BolÃvar Doctrine is finally replacing the Monroe Doctrine" on your watch. Why?
CHAVEZ: For two centuries in this hemisphere we've experienced a confrontation between two theses--America's Monroe Doctrine, which says the U.S. should exercise hegemony over all the other republics, and the doctrine of Simón BolÃvar, which envisioned a great South American republic as a counterbalance. Bush has spread the Monroe thesis globally, to make the U.S. the police of the world--if you're not with us, he says, you're against us. We're simply doing the same now with the BolÃvar thesis--a doctrine of more equality and autonomy among nations, more equilibrium of power.
TIME: What's the difference between your "socialism for the 21st century" and past attempts to fix the region's economic inequality?
CHAVEZ: When I was released from prison [in 1994] and began my political life, I naively took as a reference point Tony Blair's proposal for a "third way" between capitalism and socialism--capitalism with a human face. Not anymore. After seeing the failure of Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think a third way is possible. Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ--who I think was the first socialist--only socialism can really create a genuine society.
TIME: Yet one slogan of your re-election campaign is "Against Chávez, Against the People." You also seem to have taken on a with-me-or-against-me stance.
CHAVEZ: The difference is ethics and morals. We're not threatening anyone. That slogan is simply a call for conscious reflection on national unity. We're not going to enforce it by bombing or invading anyone.
TIME: Critics have noted that while you were free to slam President Bush on U.S. soil, a new defamation law in Venezuela makes people subject to criminal prosecution for slander against officials like you.
CHAVEZ: They need to visit Venezuela. If you think Chávez is intimidating free expression, just watch television there--my God, devil is the least of things the opposition is allowed to call me on the air.
TIME: Could Venezuela play an interlocutor role between Iran and the U.S.? You and President Bush have some things in common--you both hail from cowboy country and enjoy Clint Eastwood movies.
CHAVEZ: I like Danny Glover movies better. But I don't believe there is anyone who can play the interlocutor with a leader who considers himself master of the world, as Bush does. Before the 2002 coup attempt against me--which Bush backed--various Presidents around the world tried to be interlocutors between Bush and Chávez. I said sure, please give him my regards. But they found it a waste of time with this U.S. President. I could talk to Clinton, but not Bush.
Muhammad's Sword
by Uri Avnery
Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".
IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism" - when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".
IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism" - when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
Remote-controlled peace activist crushers
Caterpillar Inc. is working on robotic machinery, a development which will no doubt cause a great deal of joy in Israel. Israelis will soon be able to crush peace activists, or knock down walls on top of grandmothers, all with the luxury of remote control.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Osama’s “death”, CIA, OIL, and Opium Smuggling
Sept. 25, 2006 --
A report in the French newspaper L'est Republicain, which published a leaked French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) intelligence dossier dated September 21stating that a single Saudi intelligence source claimed Osama Bin Laden died of typhoid fever in August may be an attempt to diffuse controversy about a Pakistani cease fire agreement with pro-Taliban tribal leaders in Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistani border, according to U.S. intelligence sources with experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Earlier this month, ABC News reported on the comments of Pakistani Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Director General of Inter Services Public Relations, that Bin Laden and his deputy Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, would not be taken into custody if they agreed to become "peaceful citizens." The Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the Pakistani embassy in Washington claimed that Gen. Sultan's comments were misunderstood, however, the fact remains that the Pakistani agreement with the pro-Taliban tribes, especially those in North Waziristan, leaves a number of Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in place, including those from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Uighurstan, and other countries who now live under the protection of the Pakistan-recognized Islamic Emirate of Waziristan -- an entity that provides the Taliban and Al Qaeda with their first safe state after their loss of Afghanistan to a U.S.-backed government in Kabul.
The report of Bin Laden's death is likely a Saudi feint designed to relieve U.S. pressure on Pakistan's government and the pro-Taliban emirate of Waziristan. The furor surrounding former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's alleged threat to bomb Pakistan into the "stone age" if it did not join the "war on terrorism" immediately following the 911 attacks is also a clever ploy to keep Pakistan in line with U.S. pipeline plans for the region, according to energy industry sources.
Bin Laden "death" -- Chalk it up to Saudi and Pakistani smoke and mirrors.
The sudden sidelining of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Bush administration involves natural gas pipeline politics in the region. According to sources involved in pre-911 negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan on the construction of a Central Asian gas pipeline (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea was a ruse by the CIA -- using UNOCAL, Enron, and Rand as fronts -- to keep a channel of communications open with the Taliban. These knowledgeable sources claim that UNOCAL and the other CentGas partners never spent a dime of their own money on the CentGas negotiations and that all the funding came from the CIA. The CentGas deal was known as a "political project" within the energy industry. The UNOCAL lead in the CentGas project was Bob Todor, an executive vice president of UNOCAL responsible for Central Asia. The reason for the CIA's bankrolling with "black budget" money of UNOCAL in negotiations with the Taliban was to dissuade the company and its partners from doing business with Iran by building a pipeline from Turkmenistan through that country to the port of Bandar Abbas.
The CentGas "political project" with the Taliban was led by veteran U.S. diplomat and native Texan Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan (and Somalia and Zaire), coordinator of U.S. military aid to the Afghan Mujaheddin, State Department counter-terrorism corrdinator, and key Iran-Contra scandal figure (along with Richard Armitage, who negotiated U.S. weapons sales to Iran directly with Israeli intermediaries). Oakley was assisted by UNOCAL consultant and Afghanistan native Zalmay Khalilzad (former U.S. envoy to the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan and current U.S. ambassador to Iraq who was educated in neocon Leo Straussian politics at the University of Chicago). Khalizad, who worked for Rand, was recommended for the CentGas job by Cambridge Associates, an "investment firm" with offices in Arlington, Virginia and Dallas.
Energy industry sources also confirmed a high level CentGas meeting involving the Taliban, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, representatives of UNOCAL and Enron, the CIA, and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi taking place in Tashkent in 1996. The CentGas "political project" also involved then-Saudi intelligence chief and the Royal Family's "policeman" (now ambassador to the United States) Prince Turki traveling to Jalalabad, Afghanistan to meet Osama Bin Laden and warning him to "lay off" the proposed CentGas deal with the Taliban. At the time, Jalalabad was not yet under Taliban control. The Pakistani- and Saudi-supported Taliban, upon taking Jalalabad in late 1996, assured Bin Laden that he would remain under their protection. Bin Laden was told by Turki that individuals in Texas close to his late brother Salem Bin Laden (killed in a 1988 ultra-light airplane crash outside of San Antonio) personally requested Bin Laden to not interfere in the CentGas project. These Texas "individuals" reportedly included members of the Bush family, including George W. Bush and his father. Taliban representatives began to regularly visit Houston and discuss the CentGas project with UNOCAL, Enron, and politicians close to the Bush family. Meanwhile, the Saudis were convinced by their U.S. oil industry partners that the Central Asian oil and natural gas reserves represented the "next Saudi Arabia." Although this was a ruse, the Saudis decided to bankroll CentGas and other pipeline projects from the Caspian Sea to deep within former Soviet Central Asia.
Bushes to Osama Bin Laden in 1996: "Lay off" CentGas deal.
Although CentGasI was a political project to curry favor with the Taliban, recently there has been realistic U.S. interest in natural gas pipelines crisscrossing central Asia and negotiations are taking place in Ashghabat, Turkmenistan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Quetta, capital of the Baluchistan province of Pakistan. Recently, a 30 trillion cubic feet natural gas reserve was discovered near the Turkmen town of Termez, near the Iranian frontier. The current CentGas pipeline project envisages a pipeline from the Termez field to Herat, Kandahar, Quetta, eventually linking to the Sui Southern Gas Company natural gas distribution system that links Sui, Baluchistan to Karachi in Sindh Province and the port of Gwadar. There are also plans to connect the pipeline to the Indian natural gas distribution system.
Pakistan, under U.S. pressure, has cracked down on Baluchi and Sindhi nationalists -- jailing and torturing many nationalist leaders and assassinating Baluchistan's revered 80 year old leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in August. Baluchistan political leaders have begun to challenge the former princely state's forced annexation by Pakistan. The Khan of Kalat recently convened the first grand jirga in 130 years and called for the independence of Baluchistan -- citing the fact that the land was never part of British India and should have never been made a part of Pakistan. The United States, the pipeline companies, and the Musharraf regime, keenly aware that Baluchistan represents 40 percent of Pakistan's land area and 4 percent of its population, want to stamp out Baluchi nationalism for two reasons -- it endangers the Termez-Pakistan pipeline and creates a problem for a U.S. military invasion of Iran's Baluchi region in the southeast of the country.
Baluchi nationalism threatens new CentGas pipeline and U.S. plans for invasion of Iran.
In support of the Termez-Herat-Kandahar-Quetta-Sui-Gwadar pipeline, the United States continues to rebuild the original Kabul-Kandahar-Herat highway, originally built by the Morrisen Knudsen Construction Company with U.S. funds in the 1960s. In 1996, the Boise, Idaho-based Washington Group acquired Morrison-Knudsen. The Washington Group is bankrolled by the Bush family-connected Carlyle Group, according to specialists who have worked on the CentGas project and is currently involved in building and rebuilding military bases in Afghanistan. The current Kabul-Kandahar-Herat highway project was awarded to the New Jersey-based Louis Berger Corp. and kicked off by then-US ambassador Khalilzad in October 2004. The work is supported by two Turkish subcontractors and is being partly financed by Saudi Arabia and Japan, along with the United States. There are plans to link the highway with the Pakistani port of Gwadar.
Pakistan had to sideline the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province and their Al Qaeda allies to make way for a 700 km pipeline from Uzbekistan through northern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan to India. The route would be Termez-Mazar-e-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar. However, this route takes the pipeline through territory controlled by pro-Taliban tribes and Al Qaeda units. Therefore, Pakistan's Prime Minister Aziz, was compelled to seek a peace treaty with the pro-Taliban tribes (and, by default, with Al Qaeda). It serves the interests of Pakistan and its pipeline partners, including the Hamid Karzai government, Mazar-e-Sharif Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Karimov government in Tashkent, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia's Gazprom, and Indian power companies to tamp down the "Taliban" threat in order to proceed with the Uzbek-Afghan-Pakistan pipeline.
Sources close to the Aga Khan (the Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims) report that his special envoy to Kabul and Islamabad has complained to the Hamid Karzai government about the involvement of U.S. Special Forces and paramilitary private contractors in Afghan opium commerce. The smuggling of opium from Afghanistan, according to Afghan and Ismaili sources, involves trans-shipment routes through Turkey and the Balkans. The U.S. Special Forces are working with Russian-Israeli Mafia and Greek and Kurdish Mafia syndicates in Turkey to smuggle the opium. The proceeds from the opium smuggling are being laundered through Russian/Israeli Mafia-controlled banks in Cyprus.
U.S. Special Forces' opium smuggling in Afghanistan draws ire of Aga Khan.
The smuggling is also reported to involve the huge worldwide air cargo fleet of alleged Russian Jewish weapons smuggler (and friend of Afghan warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and former supplier of arms to the Taliban and Al Qaeda) Viktor Bout. Iranian intelligence is also keenly aware of the U.S. military's role in smuggling Afghan opium to Turkey and beyond.
***
As previously reported by WMR, the Russian/Israeli Mafia-connected Jack Abramoff targeted recently-convicted Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney with tainted money in order to neutralize him as a back channel for the CIA to Tehran. Ney worked in Iran's School of Shiraz in 1978 where he became conversant in Farsi. He was also an "energy consultant" (CIA non-official cover) at the same time and was involved with Iran's initial nuclear program development, a program encouraged and assisted by the United States. While a member of the House, Ney provided important contacts for the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division and the CIA front company exposed by the White House -- Brewster Jennings & Associates.
But Ney may not be the only back channel to Iran neutralized by the neo-cons, who are anxious for a war with Iran. According to WMR's Middle East sources, the recent rape charges against Israel's President Moshe Katsav reportedly are an attempt to neutralize him as a back channel to Tehran. Katsav, an Iranian Yazdi Jew, is said to have an important direct link to former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami. One of Katsav's cousins studied with Khatami at Tehran University. In fact, Khatami studied and translated the works of Alexis de Tocqueville into Farsi. Katsav's back channel to Khatami, whose recent visit to the United States was decried by the neo-con quarters, was as worrisome to the neo-cons as Ney's direct links to Tehran. Therefore, Katsav was charged with sexually assaulting a member of the staff at his official residence -- eliminating another important link between the West and Iran.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, one of the reasons former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was eager to expose the CIA's Counter-Proliferation work in South and Southeast Asia was that it focused on long-standing smuggling routes dating back to the 1970s, when Armitage worked as a partner for SEA THAI Ltd., a CIA "import-export" proprietary firm in Bangkok. Part of his time with SEA THAI was during the CIA directorship of George H. W. Bush in 1976, a time when the CIA was engaged in opium smuggling with the northern Burmese renegade army of Gen. Khun Sa. This was also a time during which the initial nuclear weapons smuggling operations of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan and his CIA enablers was underway -- operations that were known to Bob Ney in Iran in the late 1970s and other CIA agents who preceded by over a decade Valerie Plame Wilson and Brewster Jennings in tracking the nuclear smuggling routes that also involved drug smuggling operations. Before arriving in Bangkok, Armitage was stationed in Tehran from 1975 to 1976 where he worked with future Iran-Contra weapons smuggling perpetrator, Gen. Richard Secord.
In 1978, without any previous experience on Capitol Hill, Armitage became administrative assistant to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. Had Gerald Ford won re-election as president in 1976, it is clear that Armitage would have gone to the White House to work for a Vice President Bob Dole. Instead, he bided his time and joined the Reagan administration in 1981 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and then as 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1983 to 1989. From 1989 to 1993, President George H. W. Bush appointed Armitage Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East and Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance to the Newly Independent States (NIA) -- a position in which Armitage had first-hand contact with post-Soviet leaders like Azerbaijan's Gaidar Aliev, with whom Armitage would strike even closer ties as head of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Armitage's past intrigues throughout Asia were well known to the CIA. The exposure of CIA covert networks in Asia involved in ferreting out nuclear and other smuggling activities kept sleeping dogs laying for members of the Bush II administration who feared exposure of their past and current activities.
A report in the French newspaper L'est Republicain, which published a leaked French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) intelligence dossier dated September 21stating that a single Saudi intelligence source claimed Osama Bin Laden died of typhoid fever in August may be an attempt to diffuse controversy about a Pakistani cease fire agreement with pro-Taliban tribal leaders in Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistani border, according to U.S. intelligence sources with experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Earlier this month, ABC News reported on the comments of Pakistani Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Director General of Inter Services Public Relations, that Bin Laden and his deputy Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, would not be taken into custody if they agreed to become "peaceful citizens." The Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the Pakistani embassy in Washington claimed that Gen. Sultan's comments were misunderstood, however, the fact remains that the Pakistani agreement with the pro-Taliban tribes, especially those in North Waziristan, leaves a number of Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in place, including those from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Uighurstan, and other countries who now live under the protection of the Pakistan-recognized Islamic Emirate of Waziristan -- an entity that provides the Taliban and Al Qaeda with their first safe state after their loss of Afghanistan to a U.S.-backed government in Kabul.
The report of Bin Laden's death is likely a Saudi feint designed to relieve U.S. pressure on Pakistan's government and the pro-Taliban emirate of Waziristan. The furor surrounding former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's alleged threat to bomb Pakistan into the "stone age" if it did not join the "war on terrorism" immediately following the 911 attacks is also a clever ploy to keep Pakistan in line with U.S. pipeline plans for the region, according to energy industry sources.
Bin Laden "death" -- Chalk it up to Saudi and Pakistani smoke and mirrors.
The sudden sidelining of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Bush administration involves natural gas pipeline politics in the region. According to sources involved in pre-911 negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan on the construction of a Central Asian gas pipeline (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea was a ruse by the CIA -- using UNOCAL, Enron, and Rand as fronts -- to keep a channel of communications open with the Taliban. These knowledgeable sources claim that UNOCAL and the other CentGas partners never spent a dime of their own money on the CentGas negotiations and that all the funding came from the CIA. The CentGas deal was known as a "political project" within the energy industry. The UNOCAL lead in the CentGas project was Bob Todor, an executive vice president of UNOCAL responsible for Central Asia. The reason for the CIA's bankrolling with "black budget" money of UNOCAL in negotiations with the Taliban was to dissuade the company and its partners from doing business with Iran by building a pipeline from Turkmenistan through that country to the port of Bandar Abbas.
The CentGas "political project" with the Taliban was led by veteran U.S. diplomat and native Texan Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan (and Somalia and Zaire), coordinator of U.S. military aid to the Afghan Mujaheddin, State Department counter-terrorism corrdinator, and key Iran-Contra scandal figure (along with Richard Armitage, who negotiated U.S. weapons sales to Iran directly with Israeli intermediaries). Oakley was assisted by UNOCAL consultant and Afghanistan native Zalmay Khalilzad (former U.S. envoy to the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan and current U.S. ambassador to Iraq who was educated in neocon Leo Straussian politics at the University of Chicago). Khalizad, who worked for Rand, was recommended for the CentGas job by Cambridge Associates, an "investment firm" with offices in Arlington, Virginia and Dallas.
Energy industry sources also confirmed a high level CentGas meeting involving the Taliban, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, representatives of UNOCAL and Enron, the CIA, and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi taking place in Tashkent in 1996. The CentGas "political project" also involved then-Saudi intelligence chief and the Royal Family's "policeman" (now ambassador to the United States) Prince Turki traveling to Jalalabad, Afghanistan to meet Osama Bin Laden and warning him to "lay off" the proposed CentGas deal with the Taliban. At the time, Jalalabad was not yet under Taliban control. The Pakistani- and Saudi-supported Taliban, upon taking Jalalabad in late 1996, assured Bin Laden that he would remain under their protection. Bin Laden was told by Turki that individuals in Texas close to his late brother Salem Bin Laden (killed in a 1988 ultra-light airplane crash outside of San Antonio) personally requested Bin Laden to not interfere in the CentGas project. These Texas "individuals" reportedly included members of the Bush family, including George W. Bush and his father. Taliban representatives began to regularly visit Houston and discuss the CentGas project with UNOCAL, Enron, and politicians close to the Bush family. Meanwhile, the Saudis were convinced by their U.S. oil industry partners that the Central Asian oil and natural gas reserves represented the "next Saudi Arabia." Although this was a ruse, the Saudis decided to bankroll CentGas and other pipeline projects from the Caspian Sea to deep within former Soviet Central Asia.
Bushes to Osama Bin Laden in 1996: "Lay off" CentGas deal.
Although CentGasI was a political project to curry favor with the Taliban, recently there has been realistic U.S. interest in natural gas pipelines crisscrossing central Asia and negotiations are taking place in Ashghabat, Turkmenistan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Quetta, capital of the Baluchistan province of Pakistan. Recently, a 30 trillion cubic feet natural gas reserve was discovered near the Turkmen town of Termez, near the Iranian frontier. The current CentGas pipeline project envisages a pipeline from the Termez field to Herat, Kandahar, Quetta, eventually linking to the Sui Southern Gas Company natural gas distribution system that links Sui, Baluchistan to Karachi in Sindh Province and the port of Gwadar. There are also plans to connect the pipeline to the Indian natural gas distribution system.
Pakistan, under U.S. pressure, has cracked down on Baluchi and Sindhi nationalists -- jailing and torturing many nationalist leaders and assassinating Baluchistan's revered 80 year old leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in August. Baluchistan political leaders have begun to challenge the former princely state's forced annexation by Pakistan. The Khan of Kalat recently convened the first grand jirga in 130 years and called for the independence of Baluchistan -- citing the fact that the land was never part of British India and should have never been made a part of Pakistan. The United States, the pipeline companies, and the Musharraf regime, keenly aware that Baluchistan represents 40 percent of Pakistan's land area and 4 percent of its population, want to stamp out Baluchi nationalism for two reasons -- it endangers the Termez-Pakistan pipeline and creates a problem for a U.S. military invasion of Iran's Baluchi region in the southeast of the country.
Baluchi nationalism threatens new CentGas pipeline and U.S. plans for invasion of Iran.
In support of the Termez-Herat-Kandahar-Quetta-Sui-Gwadar pipeline, the United States continues to rebuild the original Kabul-Kandahar-Herat highway, originally built by the Morrisen Knudsen Construction Company with U.S. funds in the 1960s. In 1996, the Boise, Idaho-based Washington Group acquired Morrison-Knudsen. The Washington Group is bankrolled by the Bush family-connected Carlyle Group, according to specialists who have worked on the CentGas project and is currently involved in building and rebuilding military bases in Afghanistan. The current Kabul-Kandahar-Herat highway project was awarded to the New Jersey-based Louis Berger Corp. and kicked off by then-US ambassador Khalilzad in October 2004. The work is supported by two Turkish subcontractors and is being partly financed by Saudi Arabia and Japan, along with the United States. There are plans to link the highway with the Pakistani port of Gwadar.
Pakistan had to sideline the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province and their Al Qaeda allies to make way for a 700 km pipeline from Uzbekistan through northern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan to India. The route would be Termez-Mazar-e-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar. However, this route takes the pipeline through territory controlled by pro-Taliban tribes and Al Qaeda units. Therefore, Pakistan's Prime Minister Aziz, was compelled to seek a peace treaty with the pro-Taliban tribes (and, by default, with Al Qaeda). It serves the interests of Pakistan and its pipeline partners, including the Hamid Karzai government, Mazar-e-Sharif Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Karimov government in Tashkent, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia's Gazprom, and Indian power companies to tamp down the "Taliban" threat in order to proceed with the Uzbek-Afghan-Pakistan pipeline.
Sources close to the Aga Khan (the Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims) report that his special envoy to Kabul and Islamabad has complained to the Hamid Karzai government about the involvement of U.S. Special Forces and paramilitary private contractors in Afghan opium commerce. The smuggling of opium from Afghanistan, according to Afghan and Ismaili sources, involves trans-shipment routes through Turkey and the Balkans. The U.S. Special Forces are working with Russian-Israeli Mafia and Greek and Kurdish Mafia syndicates in Turkey to smuggle the opium. The proceeds from the opium smuggling are being laundered through Russian/Israeli Mafia-controlled banks in Cyprus.
U.S. Special Forces' opium smuggling in Afghanistan draws ire of Aga Khan.
The smuggling is also reported to involve the huge worldwide air cargo fleet of alleged Russian Jewish weapons smuggler (and friend of Afghan warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and former supplier of arms to the Taliban and Al Qaeda) Viktor Bout. Iranian intelligence is also keenly aware of the U.S. military's role in smuggling Afghan opium to Turkey and beyond.
***
As previously reported by WMR, the Russian/Israeli Mafia-connected Jack Abramoff targeted recently-convicted Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney with tainted money in order to neutralize him as a back channel for the CIA to Tehran. Ney worked in Iran's School of Shiraz in 1978 where he became conversant in Farsi. He was also an "energy consultant" (CIA non-official cover) at the same time and was involved with Iran's initial nuclear program development, a program encouraged and assisted by the United States. While a member of the House, Ney provided important contacts for the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division and the CIA front company exposed by the White House -- Brewster Jennings & Associates.
But Ney may not be the only back channel to Iran neutralized by the neo-cons, who are anxious for a war with Iran. According to WMR's Middle East sources, the recent rape charges against Israel's President Moshe Katsav reportedly are an attempt to neutralize him as a back channel to Tehran. Katsav, an Iranian Yazdi Jew, is said to have an important direct link to former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami. One of Katsav's cousins studied with Khatami at Tehran University. In fact, Khatami studied and translated the works of Alexis de Tocqueville into Farsi. Katsav's back channel to Khatami, whose recent visit to the United States was decried by the neo-con quarters, was as worrisome to the neo-cons as Ney's direct links to Tehran. Therefore, Katsav was charged with sexually assaulting a member of the staff at his official residence -- eliminating another important link between the West and Iran.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, one of the reasons former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was eager to expose the CIA's Counter-Proliferation work in South and Southeast Asia was that it focused on long-standing smuggling routes dating back to the 1970s, when Armitage worked as a partner for SEA THAI Ltd., a CIA "import-export" proprietary firm in Bangkok. Part of his time with SEA THAI was during the CIA directorship of George H. W. Bush in 1976, a time when the CIA was engaged in opium smuggling with the northern Burmese renegade army of Gen. Khun Sa. This was also a time during which the initial nuclear weapons smuggling operations of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan and his CIA enablers was underway -- operations that were known to Bob Ney in Iran in the late 1970s and other CIA agents who preceded by over a decade Valerie Plame Wilson and Brewster Jennings in tracking the nuclear smuggling routes that also involved drug smuggling operations. Before arriving in Bangkok, Armitage was stationed in Tehran from 1975 to 1976 where he worked with future Iran-Contra weapons smuggling perpetrator, Gen. Richard Secord.
In 1978, without any previous experience on Capitol Hill, Armitage became administrative assistant to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. Had Gerald Ford won re-election as president in 1976, it is clear that Armitage would have gone to the White House to work for a Vice President Bob Dole. Instead, he bided his time and joined the Reagan administration in 1981 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and then as 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1983 to 1989. From 1989 to 1993, President George H. W. Bush appointed Armitage Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East and Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance to the Newly Independent States (NIA) -- a position in which Armitage had first-hand contact with post-Soviet leaders like Azerbaijan's Gaidar Aliev, with whom Armitage would strike even closer ties as head of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Armitage's past intrigues throughout Asia were well known to the CIA. The exposure of CIA covert networks in Asia involved in ferreting out nuclear and other smuggling activities kept sleeping dogs laying for members of the Bush II administration who feared exposure of their past and current activities.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Anti-Cuban terrorism strikes in Italy - Car Bombing in Italy over Film on Cuba
Because some of the most prominent acts of anti-Cuban terrorism, like the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, happened a long time ago, some people may be lulled into thinking this is all about the past. It isn't. In the post below this one, I wrote about Livio Di Celmo, who I met yesterday, and whose brother Fabio was killed in a 1997 hotel bombing in Havana organized by Luis Posada Carriles. This morning, Granma reports on an act of terrorism that oocured in Italy last Saturday -- an Italian filmmaker who had just completed and released a film about anti-Cuban terrorism, and which featured the death of Fabio Di Celmo, had his car and his son's car destroyed with bombs outside their home. Fortunately no one was hurt.
Anti-Cuban terrorism is very much alive, in its deadly way.
Sept. 21, 2006
by Pedro de la Hoz
Reprinted from Daily Granma
Just before dawn last Saturday, Italian filmmaker Angelo Rizzo awoke to flames at the doorstep of his house. A few moments later he would see the remains of his and his son’s burnt cars. An intimidating message had been left in his garden: "Vattene a Cuba" (Go to Cuba).
Angelo Rizzo at a Press Conference in Havana
This was clearly not the result of weekend gang action. The attack that disturbed the quiet early morning of the Cormano Villa, near Milan, leads directly to the Miami-based anti-Cuban mafia and its accomplices.
Rizzo has just finished a film on the terrorist acts committed against tourist centers in Havana in September of 1997, organized by Luis Posada Carriles and the armed branch of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). In one of the attempts, a young Italian man, Fabio Di Celmo, lost his life. The US authorities were aware of the plans and did nothing to try to stop them.
"When Truth Awakens," was shot in Havana and in the Havana port of Mariel. The script focuses on Fabio’s relationship with the island, and his dreams and aspirations, cut short by a criminal conspiracy that was fully acknowledged by its intellectual and material authors.
With utter cynicism and a total lack of principles, during a long interview on July 12 and 13, 1998 in the New York Times , Luis Posada Carriles said: "It is sad when somebody dies, but we cannot stop […] that Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time." In the same article, Posada Carriles claims responsibility for the attacks in Havana and acknowledges that CANF had supplied them with large sums of money to finance the sinister plans. The article also displays Posada Carriles total lack of remorse: "I sleep like a baby."
Remains of Rizzo’s car, in front of his house in Cormano Village
Rizzo’s film, starring Italian actor Michel Altieri, US actor Michael Wong, and Cuban actors Enrique Molina, Carlos Padron, Enrique Almirante and Rogelio Blain, premieres on October 13 at the Rome Film Festival, although not in competition because it is already officially registered for the 2007 Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival), according to the film’s producer, Jose Luis Lobato.
While making the movie in Cuba —the second film Rizzo has shot on the island after " Un loco Sonador " (2004), a baseball movie featuring Mexican actor Pablo Montero—, Rizzo said that at the core of his film was "a criticism of terrorism and its terrible effects on innocent people."
In reporting on the vandalism of Rizzo’s property, the conservative newspaper Corriere della Sera ran this headline: "Attack on Anti-American Filmmaker, Car Burnt and Threats: Go Back to Cuba."
The qualifier "anti-American," is not only inaccurate, but also meant as provocation. After reproducing Posada Carrile’s criminal record and describing him as the "Bin Laden of the Caribbean, the Italian newspaper quotes Rizzo as saying:" I am not interested in politics, I am telling a story. I have chosen this one because it is related to the current issue of terrorism; [the film] argues that there is no such thing as good or bad terrorism. It’s the victims who speak, and in this case, an innocent man who has paid with his life. This goes far beyond the confrontation between the right and left."
Rizzo said, "[I’m certain] the car burnings are related to my film; it’s awful." An in-depth investigation into the intimidation attack on Rizzo should take into consideration the long relationship between the anti-Cuban mafia with its headquarters in southern Florida, the US government and the involvement of Italian terrorists.
Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, masterminds of the midair bombing of a Cuban airliner some 30 years ago that killed all 73 aboard, where also the main leaders behind Operation Condor, the notorious wave of repression and terrorist activities that swept Chile in the 1970s after the coup against constitutional president Salvador Allende.
It was during this time that these two men became acquainted with Stefano delle Chiaie, from the Italian neo-fascist faction "Vanguardia Nacionale." Delle Chiaie had been recruited into the Gladio Operation, a secret initiative of the CIA and secret service with the mandate to attack Western European leftists during the Cold War.
After a failed rightwing coup against the Italian Republic in 1970 —masterminded by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese in cooperation with the Vanguardia Nacionale—, Delle Chiae took refuge in Franco’s Spain. He then headed to Chile where, along with Posada Carriles’ associate Virgilio Paz Romero and CIA agent Michael Townley, he planned the dynamite attack against Chilean Christian Democratic politician Bernardo Leghton that took place on October 5, 1975 in Rome and left Leghton paralyzed.
Proof of this criminal association was revealed in declassified CIA documents.
It should come as no surprise that the Italian-Cuban-American link has been revived in 2006 to intimidate an honest filmmaker. The attempt however has backfired; the following day, in a gesture of solidarity, Angelo Rizzo put up a Cuban flag at the entrance to his home.
Anti-Cuban terrorism is very much alive, in its deadly way.
Car Bombing in Italy over Film on Cuba
The car of an Italian director who recently released a movie criticizing US-based terrorism against Cuba has been firebombed. A message was left that read: "Go to Cuba."
Sept. 21, 2006
by Pedro de la Hoz
Reprinted from Daily Granma
Just before dawn last Saturday, Italian filmmaker Angelo Rizzo awoke to flames at the doorstep of his house. A few moments later he would see the remains of his and his son’s burnt cars. An intimidating message had been left in his garden: "Vattene a Cuba" (Go to Cuba).
Angelo Rizzo at a Press Conference in Havana
This was clearly not the result of weekend gang action. The attack that disturbed the quiet early morning of the Cormano Villa, near Milan, leads directly to the Miami-based anti-Cuban mafia and its accomplices.
Rizzo has just finished a film on the terrorist acts committed against tourist centers in Havana in September of 1997, organized by Luis Posada Carriles and the armed branch of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). In one of the attempts, a young Italian man, Fabio Di Celmo, lost his life. The US authorities were aware of the plans and did nothing to try to stop them.
"When Truth Awakens," was shot in Havana and in the Havana port of Mariel. The script focuses on Fabio’s relationship with the island, and his dreams and aspirations, cut short by a criminal conspiracy that was fully acknowledged by its intellectual and material authors.
With utter cynicism and a total lack of principles, during a long interview on July 12 and 13, 1998 in the New York Times , Luis Posada Carriles said: "It is sad when somebody dies, but we cannot stop […] that Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time." In the same article, Posada Carriles claims responsibility for the attacks in Havana and acknowledges that CANF had supplied them with large sums of money to finance the sinister plans. The article also displays Posada Carriles total lack of remorse: "I sleep like a baby."
Remains of Rizzo’s car, in front of his house in Cormano Village
Rizzo’s film, starring Italian actor Michel Altieri, US actor Michael Wong, and Cuban actors Enrique Molina, Carlos Padron, Enrique Almirante and Rogelio Blain, premieres on October 13 at the Rome Film Festival, although not in competition because it is already officially registered for the 2007 Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival), according to the film’s producer, Jose Luis Lobato.
While making the movie in Cuba —the second film Rizzo has shot on the island after " Un loco Sonador " (2004), a baseball movie featuring Mexican actor Pablo Montero—, Rizzo said that at the core of his film was "a criticism of terrorism and its terrible effects on innocent people."
In reporting on the vandalism of Rizzo’s property, the conservative newspaper Corriere della Sera ran this headline: "Attack on Anti-American Filmmaker, Car Burnt and Threats: Go Back to Cuba."
The qualifier "anti-American," is not only inaccurate, but also meant as provocation. After reproducing Posada Carrile’s criminal record and describing him as the "Bin Laden of the Caribbean, the Italian newspaper quotes Rizzo as saying:" I am not interested in politics, I am telling a story. I have chosen this one because it is related to the current issue of terrorism; [the film] argues that there is no such thing as good or bad terrorism. It’s the victims who speak, and in this case, an innocent man who has paid with his life. This goes far beyond the confrontation between the right and left."
Rizzo said, "[I’m certain] the car burnings are related to my film; it’s awful." An in-depth investigation into the intimidation attack on Rizzo should take into consideration the long relationship between the anti-Cuban mafia with its headquarters in southern Florida, the US government and the involvement of Italian terrorists.
Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, masterminds of the midair bombing of a Cuban airliner some 30 years ago that killed all 73 aboard, where also the main leaders behind Operation Condor, the notorious wave of repression and terrorist activities that swept Chile in the 1970s after the coup against constitutional president Salvador Allende.
It was during this time that these two men became acquainted with Stefano delle Chiaie, from the Italian neo-fascist faction "Vanguardia Nacionale." Delle Chiaie had been recruited into the Gladio Operation, a secret initiative of the CIA and secret service with the mandate to attack Western European leftists during the Cold War.
After a failed rightwing coup against the Italian Republic in 1970 —masterminded by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese in cooperation with the Vanguardia Nacionale—, Delle Chiae took refuge in Franco’s Spain. He then headed to Chile where, along with Posada Carriles’ associate Virgilio Paz Romero and CIA agent Michael Townley, he planned the dynamite attack against Chilean Christian Democratic politician Bernardo Leghton that took place on October 5, 1975 in Rome and left Leghton paralyzed.
Proof of this criminal association was revealed in declassified CIA documents.
It should come as no surprise that the Italian-Cuban-American link has been revived in 2006 to intimidate an honest filmmaker. The attempt however has backfired; the following day, in a gesture of solidarity, Angelo Rizzo put up a Cuban flag at the entrance to his home.
A Courageous Man Speaks Out- Hugo Chavez Was In Rare Form at the UN
By Stephen Lendman
Hugo Chavez chooses his authors, political and social thinkers well, and there's no one better than Noam Chomsky. In his dramatic and courageous speech yesterday to the 61st UN General Assembly, Chavez held up a copy of Chomsky's 2003 book 'Hegemony or Survival (which I've read and quoted from before). In the book, Chomsky cites the work of Ernst Mayr whom he describes as "one of the great figures of contemporary biology." Mayr noted that beetles and bacteria have been far more successful surviving than the human species is likely to be. He also observed that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years" which is about how long ours has been around, and he went on to wonder if we might use our "alloted time" to destroy ourselves and much more with us. Chomsky then noted we certainly have the means to do it, and should it happen, which he says is very possible, we likely will become the only species ever to have made itself extinct.
Hugo Chavez also could have explained what Chomsky had to say about this possibility in his most recent book, Failed States, in which he addresses the three issues he feels are most important - "the threat of nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's only superpower is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of (causing) these catastrophes." Chomsky goes even further raising a fourth issue that the "American system" is in danger of losing its "historic values (of) equality, liberty and meaningful democracy (because of the course it's on)."
Reflecting the thinking and spirit of Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez delivered an impassioned speech to the assembled delegates who came to hear him. It's one likely to be favorably remembered many years from now. At its end, the delegates showed their appreciation and support by giving him a standing ovation (the longest one of all the leaders addressing the Assembly) in contrast to the cool and polite reception given George Bush the previous day who chose not to attend to hear the Venezuelan leader. Too bad he didn't as he might have learned from it if he stayed alert and paid attention. Citing the language in Chomsky's book in his hand, Chavez said: "The hegemonistic pretentions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species (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 head." He went on to explain that earlier the President of the US attended an Organization of American States meeting and proposed a NAFTA-type trade agreement in both regions that is the "fundamental cause of the great evils and the great tragedies currently suffered by our people. Neoliberal capitalism, the Washington Consensus....has generated....a high degree of misery, inequality and infinite tragedy for all the peoples on (this) continent."
Hugo Chavez called George Bush "the devil" several times and said he came here yesterday and "from this rostrum (talked) as if he owned the world." He denounced the President's talk, said he's responsible for all conflict in the Middle East, and that those opposed to these policies are resisting his imperial model of domination. Chavez predicted the US empire will fall, said "What we need now more than ever....is a new international order," and that he wants to see a reinvented UN be part of what can help achieve it. He said the UN under its current rules "does not work" and must be changed to bring more democracy to the organization. He called for the "foundation of a new United Nations" and proposed four fundamental changes including the "need to....suppress....the veto in the decisions taken by the Security Council (because) that elitist trace is incompatible with democracy, incompatible with the principles of equality and democracy." He also called for expanding the Security Council to include developing nations as permanent members and wants to strengthen the role of the Secretary General. He stressed that today the UN body is "worthless" and needs to be "refounded."
Hugo Chavez is dedicated to the principles and spirit of the Bolivarian Revolution he gave the people of Venezuela and wants to spread it to the developing world as a counter-force to the US model of global dominance of the developed North over the less-developed South with the US as hegemon-in-chief. He called on leaders from the developing world to unite and resist to build a new world model based on social equity and justice. Judging by the reception Chavez got yesterday, it looks like he made some progress toward that goal, especially in Latin America that's become an incubator of resistance against the unipolar world the US is beginning to lose its grip on and in support of the multi-polar one Hugo Chavez wants to help create.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Hugo Chavez chooses his authors, political and social thinkers well, and there's no one better than Noam Chomsky. In his dramatic and courageous speech yesterday to the 61st UN General Assembly, Chavez held up a copy of Chomsky's 2003 book 'Hegemony or Survival (which I've read and quoted from before). In the book, Chomsky cites the work of Ernst Mayr whom he describes as "one of the great figures of contemporary biology." Mayr noted that beetles and bacteria have been far more successful surviving than the human species is likely to be. He also observed that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years" which is about how long ours has been around, and he went on to wonder if we might use our "alloted time" to destroy ourselves and much more with us. Chomsky then noted we certainly have the means to do it, and should it happen, which he says is very possible, we likely will become the only species ever to have made itself extinct.
Hugo Chavez also could have explained what Chomsky had to say about this possibility in his most recent book, Failed States, in which he addresses the three issues he feels are most important - "the threat of nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's only superpower is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of (causing) these catastrophes." Chomsky goes even further raising a fourth issue that the "American system" is in danger of losing its "historic values (of) equality, liberty and meaningful democracy (because of the course it's on)."
Reflecting the thinking and spirit of Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez delivered an impassioned speech to the assembled delegates who came to hear him. It's one likely to be favorably remembered many years from now. At its end, the delegates showed their appreciation and support by giving him a standing ovation (the longest one of all the leaders addressing the Assembly) in contrast to the cool and polite reception given George Bush the previous day who chose not to attend to hear the Venezuelan leader. Too bad he didn't as he might have learned from it if he stayed alert and paid attention. Citing the language in Chomsky's book in his hand, Chavez said: "The hegemonistic pretentions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species (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 head." He went on to explain that earlier the President of the US attended an Organization of American States meeting and proposed a NAFTA-type trade agreement in both regions that is the "fundamental cause of the great evils and the great tragedies currently suffered by our people. Neoliberal capitalism, the Washington Consensus....has generated....a high degree of misery, inequality and infinite tragedy for all the peoples on (this) continent."
Hugo Chavez called George Bush "the devil" several times and said he came here yesterday and "from this rostrum (talked) as if he owned the world." He denounced the President's talk, said he's responsible for all conflict in the Middle East, and that those opposed to these policies are resisting his imperial model of domination. Chavez predicted the US empire will fall, said "What we need now more than ever....is a new international order," and that he wants to see a reinvented UN be part of what can help achieve it. He said the UN under its current rules "does not work" and must be changed to bring more democracy to the organization. He called for the "foundation of a new United Nations" and proposed four fundamental changes including the "need to....suppress....the veto in the decisions taken by the Security Council (because) that elitist trace is incompatible with democracy, incompatible with the principles of equality and democracy." He also called for expanding the Security Council to include developing nations as permanent members and wants to strengthen the role of the Secretary General. He stressed that today the UN body is "worthless" and needs to be "refounded."
Hugo Chavez is dedicated to the principles and spirit of the Bolivarian Revolution he gave the people of Venezuela and wants to spread it to the developing world as a counter-force to the US model of global dominance of the developed North over the less-developed South with the US as hegemon-in-chief. He called on leaders from the developing world to unite and resist to build a new world model based on social equity and justice. Judging by the reception Chavez got yesterday, it looks like he made some progress toward that goal, especially in Latin America that's become an incubator of resistance against the unipolar world the US is beginning to lose its grip on and in support of the multi-polar one Hugo Chavez wants to help create.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Bolivian President Evo Morales on Latin America, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Role of the Indigenous People of Bolivia
In a Democracy Now! special, we spend the hour with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. This marks one of his only extended televised interviews in the United States since he became Bolivia's first indigenous president.
Highlights from the interview:
Morales calls for the U.S. to extradite former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face trial for killing over 100 people. " A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it’s not conceivable that this person would still be here [in the United States]," Morales said.
Morales calls on oil companies to be partners not bosses. "The investor has the right to recuperate their investment and to a reasonable profit," Morales said. "But we can’t allow for the sacking of the country and only the companies benefiting, not the people."
Morales reveals for the first time how Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pressured Morales over his plan to nationalize Bolivia's energy resources. "I was attacked. Lula was rough with me," Morales said. [includes rush transcript]
Today, we spend the hour with Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. Ten months ago, Evo Morales made history when he became the country's first indigenous leader. At his inauguration in January, he declared the end of Bolivia's colonial and neo-liberal era. Since then he has moved to nationalize parts of the country's vast energy reserves and strengthen Bolivia's ties to Venezuela and Cuba.
Morales' rise to power began with his leadership of the coca growers union and his high-profile opposition to the U.S.-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead the street demonstrations by Indian and union groups that toppled the country's last two presidents.
On Tuesday, Morales spoke for the first time before the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He vowed to never yield to U.S. pressure to criminalize coca production. During his speech he held up a coca leaf even though it is banned in the United States.
Juan Gonzalez and I sat down with Bolivian President Evo Morales for one of his first extended televised interviews in the United States.
Evo Morales, President of Bolivia.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now! and the United States, President Evo Morales. Why did you bring a coca leaf to the United Nations?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, thanks very much for the invitation to speak with you today. It’s the first time I’ve been in these lands, the United States. And as the coca leaf has been permanently accused of being a drug, so I brought the leaf to demonstrate that the coca leaf is not a drug. The coca leaf is green. It’s not white. So I came to show that the coca leaf is not a drug and it can be beneficial to humanity. So that’s why I was there at the first ordinary session at the United Nations with a coca leaf. Had it been a drug, I would have been detained certainly. We’re starting the campaign to bring dignity back to the coca leaf, starting with the decriminalization of the coca leaf.
AMY GOODMAN: How is it used for beneficial purposes? Why is it so important to you in Bolivia?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The coca leaf is part of culture. There is legal consumption, traditional consumption, which is called the piccheo in Bolivia, the chaccheo in Peru, el mambeo in Colombia, which is the traditional chewing of coca. Moreover, this traditional consumption is backed up by scientific research done in universities in Europe and the United States. Not long ago a study came out of Harvard University that said it’s a very nutritious – it’s a good source of nutrition, that it can not only be used through chewing, but could also be consumed through eating. The last study done by the World Health Organization has demonstrated clearly that the coca leaf does no harm to people.
And there’s also ritual uses, including in the Aymara culture, for example, when you ask for someone’s hand in marriage, the coca leaf plays an important part in that ritual. We could also talk about a number of pharmaceutical products that come or derive from the coca leaf. The first local anesthetics that were used in modern medicine were derived from the coca leaf. Up to some five, six, seven years ago, there was a company from the United States that used to come to the Chapare to buy coca to be exported to the United States for the use in making Coca-Cola. And we can think of a lot of products, industrial products, that could be derived from the coca leaf that would be beneficial to humanity.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, in the United States voters here are accustomed to leaders promising much, but when they get into office delivering very little. Since you have become president in Bolivia, you have moved rapidly to make changes. You’ve cut your own salary. You’ve raised the minimum wage by 50%. What is the message you are trying to send to your own people and to Latin American leaders in general?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I never wanted to be a politician. In my country, politicians are seen as liars, thieves, arrogant people. In 1997 they tried to get me to run for president. I rejected that idea, even though that brought me problems with my own grassroots organizations. Then I was later obligated to become a member of the lower house of parliament. I didn’t want to do that at the time, either. I preferred to be the head of a rat than the tail of a horse. I preferred to be the head of my own organizations fighting for human rights and fighting for the rights of the members, and not getting involved in electoral political processes and wind up not fulfilling promises.
But what I was learning in that period in ’95, ’96, ’97, is that to get involved in politics means taking on the responsibility, a new way of looking at politics as serving the people, because to get into politics means service. And after hearing the demands, the broad demands of our grassroots organizations, I decided finally to run for president.
And for the last elections, we had a ten-point program. And of those ten, we’ve fulfilled six already. The austerity measures that you mentioned a moment ago, I cut my own salary by more than 50%, and the ministers’ as well as also the members of congress, and that money has been redirected to health and education, convinced of the idea that to arrive at the presidency means that you’re there to serve the people. And we said we were going to do a consultation for a referendum on autonomy, greater autonomy for the regions, and we’ve done that. 58% of the population said no to greater autonomy, although it is important to secure more autonomy for the regions and the indigenous communities.
We said we were going to nationalize the gas and oil sector. We did, without expropriating or kicking out any of the companies. We said it’s important to have partners, but not bosses. And we did it. The investor has the right to recuperate their investment and to a reasonable profit, but we can’t allow for the sacking of the country and only the companies benefiting, not the people. I just came from a meeting of political analysts, foreign policy analysts here, and they seemed to understand our proposals.
The struggle against corruption, it’s a key issue in my country. We’re starting that campaign aggressively, starting with members of the executive branch. The judicial branch still is not accompanying this process. And I can talk a lot about the other things that we’re doing to meet the demands that were accumulated over time. For example, the centers for eye treatments and surgery, the literacy work that we’re doing.
We’ve also made advances in terms of giving people legal documents, something that oftentimes indigenous peoples don’t have. These are the social problems that my family has lived. My mother, for example, never had an ID. She didn’t know when she was born. There’s an anecdote about my father. One day I found his ID, and there was a birthdate on it. I said to my sister Esther, “Okay, let’s have a party. We know what my father’s birthday is.” She was very happy. She said, “Yes, let’s do this birthday party.” We said to my father, “We’re going to do a party for you.” And he said, “But I don’t know what my birthday is.” We showed him his ID, and we said, “Here it is. Here’s your birthday.” And he said very bitterly, “I had to invent that date when I was drafted in the military.” My father didn’t know when he was born.
And when I was in a big political rally in 1999 in the electoral campaigns for the municipalities and I asked everybody there to raise their hand, “Who’s going to vote?” About two-thirds of the people raised their hands. Another third didn’t raise their hand, and I said, “What’s going on here? You’re not going to vote for Evo Morales?” And they all said, “We don’t have IDs. We don’t have documents.” And one companero came to me almost in tears. He said, “This society thinks I’m only useful for raising my hands or giving assent to something, but I’m not good enough to vote.” He was from northern Potosi, from the highlands. He didn’t know when he was born. He didn’t have a birth certificate. These are the sorts of problems. But with the help of some countries, we’re receiving support so we can give people documents to fully incorporate them as citizens.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, when you ran for president, many of the public opinion polls in your country showed you with a sizeable support, but not really anywhere near the majority that you actually received. So it’s obvious that they were not counting the sentiments of the people of your country properly. Why do you believe that you were able to mobilize such large support?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] In our culture, there is a cosmic law. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t be lazy. You know, the people know I never made it to the university. I never had that chance to study. But nevertheless, since I was a young child, I’ve been involved in the social struggles. Starting in 1998, I was one of the principal leaders of a region. And all this time I had to suffer insinuations, attempts to buy me off. But in our culture, honesty is very important. I’m convinced still that it was that honesty that allowed me to arrive at the presidency.
In 2002, when we won the elections but they were stolen from us -- I could explain that bitter situation of 2002. But because of a – well, through the electoral laws, campaigns are publicly financed, and we had been assigned more than a million dollars for our campaign. There’s always expenses involved in a campaign, but we spent less than half-a-million dollars. The elections end, we closed the books, did our accounting. More than half-a-million dollars was left over. And I said, “We have to give this money back to the national electoral court, to the state.” But some members of my party said, “But how are you going to give the money back. It’s easy to buy papers in Bolivia to demonstrate other forms of accounting.” I got angry, and I went on my own with just a couple of other people, and we gave that money back. People were impressed.
So, I can tell other stories like this. This year, in the election of the members of the constituent assembly, which we won in seven of the country’s nine departments -- in the national elections that took me to the presidency, we only won five of the nine -- and in this case, we also gave back over a million dollars of assigned funds. Some people who are ill-informed said we should have spent that money on health and education, but no, that’s impossible, because that’s money only for electoral campaigns and had to be returned. Honesty is so important. Even though the international institutions have said that Bolivia is sort of the second worst place in terms of corruption internationally, but those are the people who had the government in the past.
Here, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about the Bolivians who have migrated to the United States, but when I was in Argentina and Europe, I have spoken with businesspeople who hire Bolivians there, and they all say, in Europe and Argentina, the Bolivians are honest and hard-working. Even though they’re undocumented, they always pick the Bolivians to work, even if it’s clandestinely. They choose the Bolivians because they’re good workers. I was thinking we should talk to the secondary schoolteachers about creating a course for the secondary schools in honesty, because they said only through honesty are we going to make it to the presidency.
AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, President Chavez of Venezuela called President Bush a devil. What is your response to that?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I’m not interested in commenting about these words between two presidents. But I’m convinced that people who represent a family, they can be professionals or not, they can be presidents or not. They all have dignity. One thing is to question someone’s policies. We can have differences. But to attack someone’s image or a direct offense, I don’t think I share that.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of President Bush?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I hope that we can improve relations with Bush’s government. We hope that they can accompany these deep democratic transformations that we’re pursuing. We hope that we can continue with some support in health programs, but especially that they can accompany the transformations that are in course in Bolivia.
The indigenous cultures are cultures of dialogue and of life, not cultures of death and war. I’ve said publicly and very respectfully that the United States and other countries should get their troops out of Iraq, because it’s impossible that invaders and the invaded, and especially the innocent, continue to die. Conflicts should be discussed and debated in fora like the United Nations. I think it’s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss.
The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we’re very worried about global warming, that’s leaving people without water. In the past we’ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we’re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can’t live. I saw in a forum sponsored by ex-President Clinton yesterday, there’s a commission there that’s studying these issues of global warming.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in many poor countries around the world, it is said that the most powerful official in the country is the U.S. ambassador, but in your campaign, you actually ran against, not just the other opponents, but against the role of the U.S. embassy and the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia. What is the role that the United States has played historically not only in Bolivia, but in Latin America, as far as you’re concerned?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The arrogance of an ambassador or the arrogance of others, including a president, is always an error. This arrogance creates greater rebellion, greater resistance. In 2002, former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, said, “Don’t vote for Evo Morales.” And after that, people came out massively to vote for me. I said he was my best campaign chief. And a number of things were said about what would happen if I came to the presidency, that international cooperation would be reduced, we would no longer have access to markets, but in fact I’ve come to the presidency and we’ve seen a lot more support from other governments.
The United States embassy tried to effect the changes in the military high command. I said, “That’s not going to be changed. That’s a sovereign decision that we make.” So for that, we have obvious differences, but we want to work out those differences. Even though we’re an underdeveloped country, we’re a sovereign country, a country with dignity. One of the advantages that we have is that we begin to return dignity to the country. The name Bolivia is now understood. Our peoples need a strong sense of self-esteem. We want relations with all the countries that will be based on mutual respect, relations of complementarity, balance, solidarity, and for now, cooperation so that we can assure the changes that we’re trying to achieve.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In your nationalization, one of the groups in the gas companies that you nationalized were also Brazilian companies, as well. How have you been able to negotiate or deal with some of these inter-regional problems of the Brazilian companies also having such a huge say in your gas reserves?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] At first, there were protest and resistance, even from companero Lula -- well, perhaps more the company. There was an emergency meeting of the four presidents in Iguassu in Argentina. We had a closed-door meeting between the four presidents. No minister’s presence, without any press. This is the first time I’ve told anybody this. I was attacked. Lula was rough with me. “Where is our partnership? Where is that cordiality? Why didn’t you consult me before the nationalization?”
But I defended myself, and I said that on a sovereign basis our country has every right to make decisions about the future of our strategic resources. We are generous. We are companeros. We are in solidarity. And as my older brother, and as the leader of a more developed country in the region, we recognize that and we respect that. I accept him as an older brother, because he too is a union leader. He’s older than me. And he’s older than I am, and in the Indian culture we respect our elders very much. But finally, he understood very well, because we were neither expropriating nor kicking out Petrobras.
What I explained is that after the supreme decree that did the nationalization, we were guaranteeing greater security, because the new contracts were going to be transparent and ratified through congress, because previously the contracts were kept under wraps, secret, and never ratified in congress. And we also showed technically, financially, with numbers, that the company was going to be able to recover their investment and would have a reasonable profit. They weren’t going to have as much profit as before, because the largest oil fields – excuse me, from the largest gas fields, the companies only gave 18% of royalties to the state and took 82% in profit. But now, with the new law we’ve changed that around, now 82% for the government, for the state, and 18% for the companies. They’re staying. There’s no problems. And from that large field that Petrobras is managing, we’ve already seen $150 million coming into government coffers now.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, Bolivia was one of seven Condor countries that participated in the efforts to eliminate opponents of the regimes of past decades, that was spearheaded by Pinochet of Chile. The Banzer regime was an ally of the United States. As president, you’re in a position to secure and release the documents of that period, perhaps millions of documents. Will you commit yourself to doing that?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We’re in a phase of not only revealing those documents, but also trying to find out what happened to people who were disappeared under Plan Condor. Some members of the military high command are actually cooperating, who at the time were probably lower-ranking officers or cadets. We have to dignify humanity, ending impunity. And it’s imperative that the armed forces become dignified before the country, as well. It’s important to note how much the image of the armed forces has improved next to my person in the country today. We’re going to continue with this campaign through my minister of justice and to reveal, uncover, to clarify many facts. I very much want to find the bodies also of many of our mining leaders and the body of Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz.
AMY GOODMAN: Who was?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] He was a Socialist leader, who put Banzer on trial, and under the Garcia Meza dictatorship he was machine-gunned, and his remains disappeared. An intellectual who led the second nationalization of our gas and oil industries. Now we’re in the third nationalization.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Henry Kissinger, who supported Pinochet and the generals in Argentina through Latin America, should be tried for war crimes?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I’m not sure. That’s probably something for the United States to take up, but I want to take advantage of this opportunity to call on the people of the United States to help us in our efforts to extradite two [inaudible] people who practiced genocide, who were corrupt under previous administrations and who today are free here in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Names?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, former president, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of over a hundred people killed by gunfire, along with his minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. We’re trying now to use all of the instruments at our disposal to extradite him, but it’s not moving forward. It’s running into some resistance here in the United States. A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it’s not conceivable that this person would still be here. So we ask the people, the government and all the institutions of human rights to help with this.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you’ve on several occasions mentioned your indigenous origins in your movement. Throughout Latin America now, 500 years after the European conquest, the Native peoples of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, are taking much more of a role politically. What is the importance of this movement to Latin America?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] They excluded for over 500 years, exploited, and in many cases -- for over 500 years also have full rights. I mentioned at the United Nations that 34 years ago, my mother didn’t have the right to walk through public spaces, on sidewalks, in public plazas. And there are some fascist and racist sectors in Santa Cruz, who don’t want those people to enter into the fairgrounds today. And this is sort of like a fair of producers, as well as cattlemen, and it’s always been inaugurated by the president, and they’re angry because this president, the Aymara president, is not going to inaugurate it.
So there’s this strong feeling of excluded people, discriminated peoples to unite, but not for revenge against anybody nor to oppress or to subordinate anybody, but rather our struggle that recognizing we have obligations that our rights be fully respected. The thinking of indigenous peoples is not of exclusion. I can tell you about the experiences of the Aymara, the Quechua from the highlands and the valleys in Bolivia, of how they welcome people in, but not exclude people. This is the sector that’s been discriminated against. We’ve been called everything. We’ve been called animals. Manuel Rocha once called me the Andean Taliban. But we want fundamentally our rights to be respected. That’s our struggle.
AMY GOODMAN: A question about -- very last question, and that is, Mr. President, you said that the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador said people shouldn’t vote for you. Do you feel the U.S. is funding opposition groups to you?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I don’t have any documentary evidence, although the head of USAID for Latin America stated that they were going to finance a political counterbalance opposition.
AMY GOODMAN: And your response?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] This is the problem that we face. If there’s going to be U.S. financing, it has to be coordinated through our municipal authorities, as well as our national authorities. These economic supports that come from USAID, for example, that come from taxpayers’ money here in the United States, have to be useful for social ends, and not for political purposes, nor for corruption. And why do I mention corruption? And our mayors, for example, in Chapare can build a wonderful sports field for 30,000 bolivianos. USAID does it for 90,000. With that money, we could do three, not just one. We want those funds to be used well and benefit of young people.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, thank you very much.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Thank you.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Thank you very much for the interview. A special greeting to the United States people, and thanks for opening this space to me. On my arrival here in the United States, I’ve encountered many friends. I have spoken with ex-presidents Carter and Clinton. We’ve had good conversations. And it seems like the business sectors are starting to understand our message, that we want partners and not bosses. And many thanks for this interview.
Highlights from the interview:
Morales calls for the U.S. to extradite former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face trial for killing over 100 people. " A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it’s not conceivable that this person would still be here [in the United States]," Morales said.
Morales calls on oil companies to be partners not bosses. "The investor has the right to recuperate their investment and to a reasonable profit," Morales said. "But we can’t allow for the sacking of the country and only the companies benefiting, not the people."
Morales reveals for the first time how Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pressured Morales over his plan to nationalize Bolivia's energy resources. "I was attacked. Lula was rough with me," Morales said. [includes rush transcript]
Today, we spend the hour with Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. Ten months ago, Evo Morales made history when he became the country's first indigenous leader. At his inauguration in January, he declared the end of Bolivia's colonial and neo-liberal era. Since then he has moved to nationalize parts of the country's vast energy reserves and strengthen Bolivia's ties to Venezuela and Cuba.
Morales' rise to power began with his leadership of the coca growers union and his high-profile opposition to the U.S.-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead the street demonstrations by Indian and union groups that toppled the country's last two presidents.
On Tuesday, Morales spoke for the first time before the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He vowed to never yield to U.S. pressure to criminalize coca production. During his speech he held up a coca leaf even though it is banned in the United States.
Juan Gonzalez and I sat down with Bolivian President Evo Morales for one of his first extended televised interviews in the United States.
Evo Morales, President of Bolivia.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now! and the United States, President Evo Morales. Why did you bring a coca leaf to the United Nations?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, thanks very much for the invitation to speak with you today. It’s the first time I’ve been in these lands, the United States. And as the coca leaf has been permanently accused of being a drug, so I brought the leaf to demonstrate that the coca leaf is not a drug. The coca leaf is green. It’s not white. So I came to show that the coca leaf is not a drug and it can be beneficial to humanity. So that’s why I was there at the first ordinary session at the United Nations with a coca leaf. Had it been a drug, I would have been detained certainly. We’re starting the campaign to bring dignity back to the coca leaf, starting with the decriminalization of the coca leaf.
AMY GOODMAN: How is it used for beneficial purposes? Why is it so important to you in Bolivia?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The coca leaf is part of culture. There is legal consumption, traditional consumption, which is called the piccheo in Bolivia, the chaccheo in Peru, el mambeo in Colombia, which is the traditional chewing of coca. Moreover, this traditional consumption is backed up by scientific research done in universities in Europe and the United States. Not long ago a study came out of Harvard University that said it’s a very nutritious – it’s a good source of nutrition, that it can not only be used through chewing, but could also be consumed through eating. The last study done by the World Health Organization has demonstrated clearly that the coca leaf does no harm to people.
And there’s also ritual uses, including in the Aymara culture, for example, when you ask for someone’s hand in marriage, the coca leaf plays an important part in that ritual. We could also talk about a number of pharmaceutical products that come or derive from the coca leaf. The first local anesthetics that were used in modern medicine were derived from the coca leaf. Up to some five, six, seven years ago, there was a company from the United States that used to come to the Chapare to buy coca to be exported to the United States for the use in making Coca-Cola. And we can think of a lot of products, industrial products, that could be derived from the coca leaf that would be beneficial to humanity.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, in the United States voters here are accustomed to leaders promising much, but when they get into office delivering very little. Since you have become president in Bolivia, you have moved rapidly to make changes. You’ve cut your own salary. You’ve raised the minimum wage by 50%. What is the message you are trying to send to your own people and to Latin American leaders in general?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I never wanted to be a politician. In my country, politicians are seen as liars, thieves, arrogant people. In 1997 they tried to get me to run for president. I rejected that idea, even though that brought me problems with my own grassroots organizations. Then I was later obligated to become a member of the lower house of parliament. I didn’t want to do that at the time, either. I preferred to be the head of a rat than the tail of a horse. I preferred to be the head of my own organizations fighting for human rights and fighting for the rights of the members, and not getting involved in electoral political processes and wind up not fulfilling promises.
But what I was learning in that period in ’95, ’96, ’97, is that to get involved in politics means taking on the responsibility, a new way of looking at politics as serving the people, because to get into politics means service. And after hearing the demands, the broad demands of our grassroots organizations, I decided finally to run for president.
And for the last elections, we had a ten-point program. And of those ten, we’ve fulfilled six already. The austerity measures that you mentioned a moment ago, I cut my own salary by more than 50%, and the ministers’ as well as also the members of congress, and that money has been redirected to health and education, convinced of the idea that to arrive at the presidency means that you’re there to serve the people. And we said we were going to do a consultation for a referendum on autonomy, greater autonomy for the regions, and we’ve done that. 58% of the population said no to greater autonomy, although it is important to secure more autonomy for the regions and the indigenous communities.
We said we were going to nationalize the gas and oil sector. We did, without expropriating or kicking out any of the companies. We said it’s important to have partners, but not bosses. And we did it. The investor has the right to recuperate their investment and to a reasonable profit, but we can’t allow for the sacking of the country and only the companies benefiting, not the people. I just came from a meeting of political analysts, foreign policy analysts here, and they seemed to understand our proposals.
The struggle against corruption, it’s a key issue in my country. We’re starting that campaign aggressively, starting with members of the executive branch. The judicial branch still is not accompanying this process. And I can talk a lot about the other things that we’re doing to meet the demands that were accumulated over time. For example, the centers for eye treatments and surgery, the literacy work that we’re doing.
We’ve also made advances in terms of giving people legal documents, something that oftentimes indigenous peoples don’t have. These are the social problems that my family has lived. My mother, for example, never had an ID. She didn’t know when she was born. There’s an anecdote about my father. One day I found his ID, and there was a birthdate on it. I said to my sister Esther, “Okay, let’s have a party. We know what my father’s birthday is.” She was very happy. She said, “Yes, let’s do this birthday party.” We said to my father, “We’re going to do a party for you.” And he said, “But I don’t know what my birthday is.” We showed him his ID, and we said, “Here it is. Here’s your birthday.” And he said very bitterly, “I had to invent that date when I was drafted in the military.” My father didn’t know when he was born.
And when I was in a big political rally in 1999 in the electoral campaigns for the municipalities and I asked everybody there to raise their hand, “Who’s going to vote?” About two-thirds of the people raised their hands. Another third didn’t raise their hand, and I said, “What’s going on here? You’re not going to vote for Evo Morales?” And they all said, “We don’t have IDs. We don’t have documents.” And one companero came to me almost in tears. He said, “This society thinks I’m only useful for raising my hands or giving assent to something, but I’m not good enough to vote.” He was from northern Potosi, from the highlands. He didn’t know when he was born. He didn’t have a birth certificate. These are the sorts of problems. But with the help of some countries, we’re receiving support so we can give people documents to fully incorporate them as citizens.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, when you ran for president, many of the public opinion polls in your country showed you with a sizeable support, but not really anywhere near the majority that you actually received. So it’s obvious that they were not counting the sentiments of the people of your country properly. Why do you believe that you were able to mobilize such large support?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] In our culture, there is a cosmic law. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t be lazy. You know, the people know I never made it to the university. I never had that chance to study. But nevertheless, since I was a young child, I’ve been involved in the social struggles. Starting in 1998, I was one of the principal leaders of a region. And all this time I had to suffer insinuations, attempts to buy me off. But in our culture, honesty is very important. I’m convinced still that it was that honesty that allowed me to arrive at the presidency.
In 2002, when we won the elections but they were stolen from us -- I could explain that bitter situation of 2002. But because of a – well, through the electoral laws, campaigns are publicly financed, and we had been assigned more than a million dollars for our campaign. There’s always expenses involved in a campaign, but we spent less than half-a-million dollars. The elections end, we closed the books, did our accounting. More than half-a-million dollars was left over. And I said, “We have to give this money back to the national electoral court, to the state.” But some members of my party said, “But how are you going to give the money back. It’s easy to buy papers in Bolivia to demonstrate other forms of accounting.” I got angry, and I went on my own with just a couple of other people, and we gave that money back. People were impressed.
So, I can tell other stories like this. This year, in the election of the members of the constituent assembly, which we won in seven of the country’s nine departments -- in the national elections that took me to the presidency, we only won five of the nine -- and in this case, we also gave back over a million dollars of assigned funds. Some people who are ill-informed said we should have spent that money on health and education, but no, that’s impossible, because that’s money only for electoral campaigns and had to be returned. Honesty is so important. Even though the international institutions have said that Bolivia is sort of the second worst place in terms of corruption internationally, but those are the people who had the government in the past.
Here, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about the Bolivians who have migrated to the United States, but when I was in Argentina and Europe, I have spoken with businesspeople who hire Bolivians there, and they all say, in Europe and Argentina, the Bolivians are honest and hard-working. Even though they’re undocumented, they always pick the Bolivians to work, even if it’s clandestinely. They choose the Bolivians because they’re good workers. I was thinking we should talk to the secondary schoolteachers about creating a course for the secondary schools in honesty, because they said only through honesty are we going to make it to the presidency.
AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, President Chavez of Venezuela called President Bush a devil. What is your response to that?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I’m not interested in commenting about these words between two presidents. But I’m convinced that people who represent a family, they can be professionals or not, they can be presidents or not. They all have dignity. One thing is to question someone’s policies. We can have differences. But to attack someone’s image or a direct offense, I don’t think I share that.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of President Bush?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I hope that we can improve relations with Bush’s government. We hope that they can accompany these deep democratic transformations that we’re pursuing. We hope that we can continue with some support in health programs, but especially that they can accompany the transformations that are in course in Bolivia.
The indigenous cultures are cultures of dialogue and of life, not cultures of death and war. I’ve said publicly and very respectfully that the United States and other countries should get their troops out of Iraq, because it’s impossible that invaders and the invaded, and especially the innocent, continue to die. Conflicts should be discussed and debated in fora like the United Nations. I think it’s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss.
The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we’re very worried about global warming, that’s leaving people without water. In the past we’ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we’re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can’t live. I saw in a forum sponsored by ex-President Clinton yesterday, there’s a commission there that’s studying these issues of global warming.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in many poor countries around the world, it is said that the most powerful official in the country is the U.S. ambassador, but in your campaign, you actually ran against, not just the other opponents, but against the role of the U.S. embassy and the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia. What is the role that the United States has played historically not only in Bolivia, but in Latin America, as far as you’re concerned?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The arrogance of an ambassador or the arrogance of others, including a president, is always an error. This arrogance creates greater rebellion, greater resistance. In 2002, former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, said, “Don’t vote for Evo Morales.” And after that, people came out massively to vote for me. I said he was my best campaign chief. And a number of things were said about what would happen if I came to the presidency, that international cooperation would be reduced, we would no longer have access to markets, but in fact I’ve come to the presidency and we’ve seen a lot more support from other governments.
The United States embassy tried to effect the changes in the military high command. I said, “That’s not going to be changed. That’s a sovereign decision that we make.” So for that, we have obvious differences, but we want to work out those differences. Even though we’re an underdeveloped country, we’re a sovereign country, a country with dignity. One of the advantages that we have is that we begin to return dignity to the country. The name Bolivia is now understood. Our peoples need a strong sense of self-esteem. We want relations with all the countries that will be based on mutual respect, relations of complementarity, balance, solidarity, and for now, cooperation so that we can assure the changes that we’re trying to achieve.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In your nationalization, one of the groups in the gas companies that you nationalized were also Brazilian companies, as well. How have you been able to negotiate or deal with some of these inter-regional problems of the Brazilian companies also having such a huge say in your gas reserves?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] At first, there were protest and resistance, even from companero Lula -- well, perhaps more the company. There was an emergency meeting of the four presidents in Iguassu in Argentina. We had a closed-door meeting between the four presidents. No minister’s presence, without any press. This is the first time I’ve told anybody this. I was attacked. Lula was rough with me. “Where is our partnership? Where is that cordiality? Why didn’t you consult me before the nationalization?”
But I defended myself, and I said that on a sovereign basis our country has every right to make decisions about the future of our strategic resources. We are generous. We are companeros. We are in solidarity. And as my older brother, and as the leader of a more developed country in the region, we recognize that and we respect that. I accept him as an older brother, because he too is a union leader. He’s older than me. And he’s older than I am, and in the Indian culture we respect our elders very much. But finally, he understood very well, because we were neither expropriating nor kicking out Petrobras.
What I explained is that after the supreme decree that did the nationalization, we were guaranteeing greater security, because the new contracts were going to be transparent and ratified through congress, because previously the contracts were kept under wraps, secret, and never ratified in congress. And we also showed technically, financially, with numbers, that the company was going to be able to recover their investment and would have a reasonable profit. They weren’t going to have as much profit as before, because the largest oil fields – excuse me, from the largest gas fields, the companies only gave 18% of royalties to the state and took 82% in profit. But now, with the new law we’ve changed that around, now 82% for the government, for the state, and 18% for the companies. They’re staying. There’s no problems. And from that large field that Petrobras is managing, we’ve already seen $150 million coming into government coffers now.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, Bolivia was one of seven Condor countries that participated in the efforts to eliminate opponents of the regimes of past decades, that was spearheaded by Pinochet of Chile. The Banzer regime was an ally of the United States. As president, you’re in a position to secure and release the documents of that period, perhaps millions of documents. Will you commit yourself to doing that?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We’re in a phase of not only revealing those documents, but also trying to find out what happened to people who were disappeared under Plan Condor. Some members of the military high command are actually cooperating, who at the time were probably lower-ranking officers or cadets. We have to dignify humanity, ending impunity. And it’s imperative that the armed forces become dignified before the country, as well. It’s important to note how much the image of the armed forces has improved next to my person in the country today. We’re going to continue with this campaign through my minister of justice and to reveal, uncover, to clarify many facts. I very much want to find the bodies also of many of our mining leaders and the body of Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz.
AMY GOODMAN: Who was?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] He was a Socialist leader, who put Banzer on trial, and under the Garcia Meza dictatorship he was machine-gunned, and his remains disappeared. An intellectual who led the second nationalization of our gas and oil industries. Now we’re in the third nationalization.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Henry Kissinger, who supported Pinochet and the generals in Argentina through Latin America, should be tried for war crimes?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I’m not sure. That’s probably something for the United States to take up, but I want to take advantage of this opportunity to call on the people of the United States to help us in our efforts to extradite two [inaudible] people who practiced genocide, who were corrupt under previous administrations and who today are free here in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Names?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, former president, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of over a hundred people killed by gunfire, along with his minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. We’re trying now to use all of the instruments at our disposal to extradite him, but it’s not moving forward. It’s running into some resistance here in the United States. A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it’s not conceivable that this person would still be here. So we ask the people, the government and all the institutions of human rights to help with this.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you’ve on several occasions mentioned your indigenous origins in your movement. Throughout Latin America now, 500 years after the European conquest, the Native peoples of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, are taking much more of a role politically. What is the importance of this movement to Latin America?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] They excluded for over 500 years, exploited, and in many cases -- for over 500 years also have full rights. I mentioned at the United Nations that 34 years ago, my mother didn’t have the right to walk through public spaces, on sidewalks, in public plazas. And there are some fascist and racist sectors in Santa Cruz, who don’t want those people to enter into the fairgrounds today. And this is sort of like a fair of producers, as well as cattlemen, and it’s always been inaugurated by the president, and they’re angry because this president, the Aymara president, is not going to inaugurate it.
So there’s this strong feeling of excluded people, discriminated peoples to unite, but not for revenge against anybody nor to oppress or to subordinate anybody, but rather our struggle that recognizing we have obligations that our rights be fully respected. The thinking of indigenous peoples is not of exclusion. I can tell you about the experiences of the Aymara, the Quechua from the highlands and the valleys in Bolivia, of how they welcome people in, but not exclude people. This is the sector that’s been discriminated against. We’ve been called everything. We’ve been called animals. Manuel Rocha once called me the Andean Taliban. But we want fundamentally our rights to be respected. That’s our struggle.
AMY GOODMAN: A question about -- very last question, and that is, Mr. President, you said that the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador said people shouldn’t vote for you. Do you feel the U.S. is funding opposition groups to you?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I don’t have any documentary evidence, although the head of USAID for Latin America stated that they were going to finance a political counterbalance opposition.
AMY GOODMAN: And your response?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] This is the problem that we face. If there’s going to be U.S. financing, it has to be coordinated through our municipal authorities, as well as our national authorities. These economic supports that come from USAID, for example, that come from taxpayers’ money here in the United States, have to be useful for social ends, and not for political purposes, nor for corruption. And why do I mention corruption? And our mayors, for example, in Chapare can build a wonderful sports field for 30,000 bolivianos. USAID does it for 90,000. With that money, we could do three, not just one. We want those funds to be used well and benefit of young people.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, thank you very much.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Thank you.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Thank you very much for the interview. A special greeting to the United States people, and thanks for opening this space to me. On my arrival here in the United States, I’ve encountered many friends. I have spoken with ex-presidents Carter and Clinton. We’ve had good conversations. And it seems like the business sectors are starting to understand our message, that we want partners and not bosses. And many thanks for this interview.
Bush Rages: “I am not Beelzebub, Lord of Sulfur”
By Mike Whitney
My oh my, has Hugo Chavez caused a furor. Looking at the news reports filed in the last 24 hours, one would think that he snuck a dirty-bomb into the United Nations rather than gave a speech. In fact, the plucky Chavez may have delivered the finest 30 minute presentation that august assembly has ever heard. In that short span of time he publicly throttled the Global Emperor in front of 6 billion people and left his bruised and bloodied carcass splattered across the canvas like Roberto Duran in Round 9 of the middleweight championship match…..
“No mas, no mas no mas”…
And what about the performance? Is Chavez part of a theatre troupe or is he just earning his chops as a method actor?
Whatever it is; it seems to be working. After skewering Bush as “the devil” and sniffing around for sulfur (the traditional sign of Lucifer) Chavez performed his ablutions with a sign of the cross and an angelic expression worthy of Botticelli.
If you’re a lefty, it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Chavez should give lessons in public speaking. His appearance was like a clap of thunder; waving Chomsky with one hand and pummeling Bush with the other. He managed to heap more muck on “Guantanamo Nation” than anyone since Harold Pinter gave his blistering Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on 12-7-05. That’s when Pinter said:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have ever talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It is a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Chavez matched Pinter word for word, exposing the hypocrisy, lies and brutality of an administration that never stops lecturing about freedom and liberation even though it grinds out mountains of carnage everywhere it goes.
And where was Bush when Chavez delivered his broadside ….hiding behind Karen Hughes skirts, picking out a new eye-liner for his next televised harangue against Muslims, retrieving his Yale pom-poms from the dry-cleaners?
Our benighted leader always seems to disappear whenever the prospect of danger arises. He skedaddled when his number came up for the Alabama National Guard and he lit-out for the safety of a Nebraska cornfield when the planes hit the towers. He even vamoosed at a trade summit in Argentina when Chavez threatened “to sneak up behind him and give him a bear-hug.” That really put a spring in old Bush’s step as he quickly scuttled to the safety of Airforce One.
One thing is certain, whenever there’s peril, President “gone-to-soon” will be speeding off in a trail of vapor.
In any case, Bush was not missed at the UN massacre yesterday. Chavez held-forth like a preacher at a brothel; scattering the bodies and kicking open the windows to let the sunlight in. He delivered one, ferocious roundhouse punch after another….
Boom, boom, boom…until the crowd rose in a thunderous 5 minute ovation. (which was carefully omitted from the TV coverage)
“What would the people of the world tell (Bush) if they were given the floor?” Chavez asked. “What would they have to say? I have some inkling of what they would say, what the oppressed people think. They would say, ‘Yankee imperialist, go home.”
“He spoke to the people of Lebanon,” Chavez added. “Many of you have seen, he said, how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut were delivered with laser precision….This is imperialist (and) genocidal; the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, ‘We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’”
Ouch; no wonder Bush “high-tailed it” out of the UN before the ensuing bloodbath.
Chavez is like a battering ram punching holes in the wall of silence which surrounds King George. Right after his speech I checked in at CNN and, as I expected, Bush-apologist Wolf Blitzer was spinning in his wingtips frantically trying to stitch together the tattered image of the Dear Leader. A quick peek at Google News confirms that the entire arsenal of corporate media is now engaged in the hopeless task of salvaging Bush’s wretched presidency.
But the damage is done. Chavez played the match on Bush’s home turf and beat him like a drum. Bush is probably still quivering under his desk.
“There are other ways of thinking,” Chavez opined. “There are young people who think differently and this has happened in a mere decade. It has been shown that ‘the end of history’ was a false assumption, and the same is true of Pax Americana and the establishment of a ‘capitalist neo-liberal world. The system has only generated more poverty. Who believes in it now?”
Yes, who believes it now? Who believes in a party which has only produced two ideas in its entire history; tax cuts and war? Who believes that endless bombardment and martial law can be passed off as democracy and liberation? Who believes that a rogue’s gallery of liars, war-profiteers and gangsters can work in the public’s interest?
“We want ideas to save our planet from the imperialist threat. And, hopefully in this very century, in not to long a time, we will see a new era, and for our children and grandchildren, a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.”
Yes, Hugo, we want peace with our neighbors, peace with our friends, and peace with our enemies. We’re sick of war and the men who want war; and that includes every feckless politico in Congress, Democrat and Republican alike.
“The hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species. We appeal to the people of the United States and of the world to halt this threat which is like a sword hanging over our heads.”
There’s no time to lose. We have to dump Bush NOW and get on with the pressing issues of global warming, peak oil, nuclear proliferation, poverty and AIDS.
Chavez is right; the present model for global rule is broken and corrupt. We need a change.
“Capitalism is savagery,” Chavez boomed.
Viva Chavez.
“The devil is right at home…. The devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came right here…And it still smells of sulfur today.” Hugo Chavez; address to the UN General Assembly 9-20-06
My oh my, has Hugo Chavez caused a furor. Looking at the news reports filed in the last 24 hours, one would think that he snuck a dirty-bomb into the United Nations rather than gave a speech. In fact, the plucky Chavez may have delivered the finest 30 minute presentation that august assembly has ever heard. In that short span of time he publicly throttled the Global Emperor in front of 6 billion people and left his bruised and bloodied carcass splattered across the canvas like Roberto Duran in Round 9 of the middleweight championship match…..
“No mas, no mas no mas”…
And what about the performance? Is Chavez part of a theatre troupe or is he just earning his chops as a method actor?
Whatever it is; it seems to be working. After skewering Bush as “the devil” and sniffing around for sulfur (the traditional sign of Lucifer) Chavez performed his ablutions with a sign of the cross and an angelic expression worthy of Botticelli.
If you’re a lefty, it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Chavez should give lessons in public speaking. His appearance was like a clap of thunder; waving Chomsky with one hand and pummeling Bush with the other. He managed to heap more muck on “Guantanamo Nation” than anyone since Harold Pinter gave his blistering Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on 12-7-05. That’s when Pinter said:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have ever talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It is a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Chavez matched Pinter word for word, exposing the hypocrisy, lies and brutality of an administration that never stops lecturing about freedom and liberation even though it grinds out mountains of carnage everywhere it goes.
And where was Bush when Chavez delivered his broadside ….hiding behind Karen Hughes skirts, picking out a new eye-liner for his next televised harangue against Muslims, retrieving his Yale pom-poms from the dry-cleaners?
Our benighted leader always seems to disappear whenever the prospect of danger arises. He skedaddled when his number came up for the Alabama National Guard and he lit-out for the safety of a Nebraska cornfield when the planes hit the towers. He even vamoosed at a trade summit in Argentina when Chavez threatened “to sneak up behind him and give him a bear-hug.” That really put a spring in old Bush’s step as he quickly scuttled to the safety of Airforce One.
One thing is certain, whenever there’s peril, President “gone-to-soon” will be speeding off in a trail of vapor.
In any case, Bush was not missed at the UN massacre yesterday. Chavez held-forth like a preacher at a brothel; scattering the bodies and kicking open the windows to let the sunlight in. He delivered one, ferocious roundhouse punch after another….
Boom, boom, boom…until the crowd rose in a thunderous 5 minute ovation. (which was carefully omitted from the TV coverage)
“What would the people of the world tell (Bush) if they were given the floor?” Chavez asked. “What would they have to say? I have some inkling of what they would say, what the oppressed people think. They would say, ‘Yankee imperialist, go home.”
“He spoke to the people of Lebanon,” Chavez added. “Many of you have seen, he said, how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut were delivered with laser precision….This is imperialist (and) genocidal; the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, ‘We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’”
Ouch; no wonder Bush “high-tailed it” out of the UN before the ensuing bloodbath.
Chavez is like a battering ram punching holes in the wall of silence which surrounds King George. Right after his speech I checked in at CNN and, as I expected, Bush-apologist Wolf Blitzer was spinning in his wingtips frantically trying to stitch together the tattered image of the Dear Leader. A quick peek at Google News confirms that the entire arsenal of corporate media is now engaged in the hopeless task of salvaging Bush’s wretched presidency.
But the damage is done. Chavez played the match on Bush’s home turf and beat him like a drum. Bush is probably still quivering under his desk.
“There are other ways of thinking,” Chavez opined. “There are young people who think differently and this has happened in a mere decade. It has been shown that ‘the end of history’ was a false assumption, and the same is true of Pax Americana and the establishment of a ‘capitalist neo-liberal world. The system has only generated more poverty. Who believes in it now?”
Yes, who believes it now? Who believes in a party which has only produced two ideas in its entire history; tax cuts and war? Who believes that endless bombardment and martial law can be passed off as democracy and liberation? Who believes that a rogue’s gallery of liars, war-profiteers and gangsters can work in the public’s interest?
“We want ideas to save our planet from the imperialist threat. And, hopefully in this very century, in not to long a time, we will see a new era, and for our children and grandchildren, a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.”
Yes, Hugo, we want peace with our neighbors, peace with our friends, and peace with our enemies. We’re sick of war and the men who want war; and that includes every feckless politico in Congress, Democrat and Republican alike.
“The hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species. We appeal to the people of the United States and of the world to halt this threat which is like a sword hanging over our heads.”
There’s no time to lose. We have to dump Bush NOW and get on with the pressing issues of global warming, peak oil, nuclear proliferation, poverty and AIDS.
Chavez is right; the present model for global rule is broken and corrupt. We need a change.
“Capitalism is savagery,” Chavez boomed.
Viva Chavez.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)