These orchestrated attacks on Chávez are a travesty

[Swagman]

These orchestrated attacks on Chávez are a travesty
A social revolution is taking place in Venezuela. No wonder the neocons and their friends are determined to discredit it

George Galloway
Wednesday February 28, 2007
The Guardian

The chilling Oliver Stone film Salvador got a rare airing on television this week. It was a reminder of a time when, for those on the left, little victories were increasingly dwarfed by big defeats - not least in a Latin America which became synonymous with death squads and juntas. How different things seem now. Yesterday US Vice-President Dick Cheney came uncomfortably close to the reality of Afghan resistance to foreign occupation. On the same day Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez delivered a mightier blow to the neocon dream of US domination, announcing an extension of public ownership of his country's oil fields - the richest outside the Middle East.

Much more is at stake than London mayor Ken Livingstone's welcome oil deal with Chávez, which will see London bus fares halved while Venezuela gets expertise from city hall and a bridgehead in the capital of the US's viceroy in Europe. Washington's biggest oil supplier is now firmly in the grip of a social revolution. This month I watched with Chávez as thousands of soldiers, French and British tanks, Russian helicopters and brand new Mirage and Sukhoi fighter bombers passed by: the soldiers chanting "patria, socialismo o muerte" - enough to make any US president blanch. Chávez answered the salute with the words: "the Bolivarian revolution is a peaceful revolution but it is not unarmed".

The music played throughout the event was the hymn of Salvador Allende's 1970s Chilean government, declaring that the people united will never be defeated. But Chávez's socialism is a good deal more red than Allende's - and its enemies seem no less determined than those who bathed Chile in blood in 1973. Despite complete control of Venezuela's national assembly - the opposition boycotted the last elections after being defeated in seven electoral tests in a row - Chávez has been given enabling powers for 18 months to ensure he can pilot his reforms through entrenched opposition from the civil service, big business, the previously all-powerful oligarchy, their vast media interests and their friends in Washington. Among those friends we must include our own prime minister, who only last year declared Venezuela to be in breach of international democratic norms - though when I pressed him in parliament he was unable to list them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2023038,00.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Clarification on a small part: the 'London bus fares halved' is for those on income support

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has signed an agreement with Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela Europa which will see a 20 per cent reduction in the price of fuel for London's bus fleet leading to cheaper fares for Londoners receiving income support.

Recipients of the benefit will be able to claim a 50 per cent discount on bus and tram travel. It's estimated that almost 250,000 Londoners will be eligible for the concession.

In return London will provide specialist technical assistance to Venezuelan cities in areas such transport, protection of the environment, development of tourism, and town planning.
...
Savings under the scheme will result in a 1% reduction in the operation costs of London's bus network. The 20% discount on the oil will be calculated twice a year against the prevailing world price.

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/news.php?slug=Oil%20Deal-Leads-to-Reduced-Bus-Fares-for-250000-Londoners&article_id=595

I did think it strange that Venezuela could halve the bus fares for London - even it provided free fuel, I wouldn't think that would amount to half of the fare. Livingstone is concentrating the saving on the 4% or so on income support.

[Peace Patriot]

2. This is the thing: left to our own free democratic choice, most people would choose

our common ownership and development of resources such as oil and forests, with everyone benefiting, and everyone collectively controlling environmental and social impacts. Choosing freely, I don't think most people would opt for a highly centralized, controlled economy--such as Stalinist Russia--nor would they choose out-of-control global corporate predation, and giant, non-competitive,"robber baron" monopolies, such as we have in the US. We would choose something in between. We would choose trade--long a characteristic of human beings, who love variety and adventure, and love to make things--and we would choose fairness, equity, social responsibility, progress and hope.

Everywhere that there are transparent elections--and the healthy political culture that insures transparent vote counting and truly free choices--these are the things that people choose: sharing of profits and benefits, common ownership or strong regulatory control of vital resources, social progress. They don't choose predatory capitalism. They don't choose an onerous state. They don't choose dictators. They don't choose some people getting super-rich at the expense of others. They choose political liberty and economic fairness--some combination of socialism and the better aspects of capitalism.

But US-based and other global corporate predators--who have managed to create massive monopolies with perpetual life, that gobble up resources, money and power and hold them, and increase them, forever--with medieval, top down organization, and all profits sucked up to the top, to benefit the few--DON'T WANT US TO HAVE OTHER CHOICES. Thus, in their monopolistic control of all news and opinion, they revile a country like Venezuela and insanely claim--with no evidence whatever--that it is a dictatorship, when it is obviously not just a democracy, but a far better democracy than exists in the US. Hugo Chavez is its chosen leader. But the story doesn't end there. Chavez is enthusiastically supported by millions of voters, his government is full of intelligent, democracy-minded people, and there is very high level of ordinary citizen participation in Venezuela, through local councils and strong grass roots organizing. The country has a serious rich/poor gap--the legacy of past fascism--but it is working toward better equity and justice, not by seizing anybody's wealth (as occurred in the Russian revolution), but by equitable taxation, use of resources for the common good, and fast development of education, universal medical care, small business loans and grants, and other bootstrap measures to give the poor a chance.

The corporate news monopolies not only do not want us to know about this, they want us to have a completely upside down and wrong impression of it. They want us to think that it is not possible to have both fairness and democracy. They want us to think that fair taxation of oil giants, for instance, can only occur if there is a dictator running the government. They want us to think that THEY--the corporate predators--are the democratic ones, when in truth they are medieval monarchies that oppress us all. The corporate news monopolies themselves, for instance, are run by 5 rightwing billionaire CEOs, who dictate all news and opinion in the US. We have pretty much lost our democracy. The Venezuelans have gained democracy. This is what the corporate predators don't want us to know.

The fascist press makes much of the recent grant of power-by-edict from the National Assembly to Chavez, to fast-track economic reform. This is a constitutional power and it is limited. It is very similar to the "rubber stamp" that Congress gave FDR in our country, to pull us out of the Great Depression. The rightwing called FDR a "dictator," at the time. They called Social Security a totalitarian measure. They would have preferred old people to starve and be discarded. Clearly, society had to take measures to insure everyone an income in their old age, because predatory capitalism would never do that for their workers voluntarily. Did it harm any capitalist enterprise? No. Social Security, strong labor laws, free public education and libraries, public infrastructure (parks, roads, schools, hospitals), and even outright job creation by government, and other such "socialist" measures helped to create the most prosperous country on earth.

That is where Venezuela is headed--toward a strong middle class and prosperity--by using the current profitability of its oil reserves to benefit everyone. The Corporate Reich--and their favorite regime, the fascist Bushites--want to deny Venezuelans those choices, and return to the days of fascist exploitation. And they want to deny us--the people of the US--any knowledge of what our democratic choices are, because one of the those choices of a sovereign people, with transparent elections, is to pull the corporate charters of bad actor corporations, dismantle them and seize their assets for the common good, and another is to strongly regulate them in the common interest. The people of the US hold these potential powers--powers that could not only transform our society for the better, but that could stop the oppression that US-based corporations inflict on others--so they want us to remain ignorant, and they have taken extraordinary measures to deny us free choice, such as grabbing direct control of our election system, during the 2002-2004 period, with electronic voting machines run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--the most absurd control mechanism of all.

Here are the lessons of Venezuela, and of the huge, peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) revolution that is sweeping South America, that I have gleaned from my research. We would do well to heed them:

1. Transparent elections.
2. Grass roots organization.
3. Think big.

With these three simple precepts--simple to state, not so simple to implement--South America now has a 100% indigenous indian as president of Bolivia, socialist Evo Morales (first indigenous head of state on the continent), Bolivarian visionary Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela (another brown face), a US-educated leftist economist, Rafael Correa, as president of Ecuador (a third brown face)--all unprecedented--a left-center friend of the Bolivarians, Nestor Kirchner, as president of Argentina, a left-center friend of the Bolivarians, Lula da Silva (former steelworker and leader of the third world revolt against neo-liberalism) as president of Brazil, socialist Michele Batchelet (who was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet) as president of Chile, a leftist government in Uruguay, a leftist government in Nicaragua, and strong leftist movements in Peru, Paraguay and Guatemala (which will likely bear fruit in the next election cycles). A revolution. With no guns. The bottom line condition is transparent elections--a long term project of the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups. They failed in Mexico (long story--basically having to do with the fascist state on Mexico's border, and I don't mean Guatemala). But they are succeeding everywhere else (and there is a huge democracy movement in southern Mexico and Mexico City, which will eventually succeed). And all of these new leftist governments are cooperating with each other on regional economic and political initiatives, for mutual benefit and strength in numbers.

U.S. voters, take note. If you want to join this revolution, and have a fair and just society once again, and a good government, and a progressive 21st century, transparent vote counting is the key. We must remove these Bushite electronic voting corporations from our election system, as the vital first step in restoration of our democracy. And if we cannot remove the machinery at once--due to the quickly entrenched corruption around them--we must start by insisting on a 100% hand-count of the votes against the machine totals. Our corrupt Congress is proposing a 2% hand-count. That is ridiculous, given what these fraudulent voting systems have produced (Bush-Cheney's "re-election"). Venezuela hand-counts FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the votes, against the machine totals. That's good, for a well-tested system. That's why they have a good government, and we have the worst government in US history, and in the history of western democracy.