Speakout: Picture of Venezuela's Chavez twisted

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In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected president with almost 60 percent of the votes, incredibly overthrowing the entrenched and well-financed elite that had controlled the country for decades. That elite has never forgiven him and today is doing everything possible to tumble him. Sadly, the U.S. government and mass media have joined in this very undemocratic effort.

Their accusations have some common themes. First, Chavez is a communist because of his close association with Cuba. Is George W. Bush a communist because the U.S. has close ties with China?

Chavez's hero is Simon Bolivar, not Marx or Lenin. Bolivar liberated much of South America from the Spaniards, but he was also concerned about another colonial power, saying that "the United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty." It is a concern Chavez shares. After the April 2002 coup against him, Condoleezza Rice warned Chavez, not the coup leaders, to "respect constitutional processes."

A second accusation is that Chavez is a dictator and will limit freedom of expression very shortly. This has been said since 1998 when he was just a candidate for the presidency. To date, there is not one deprecating word against Chavez that has not been printed or spoken.
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A great difference exists between what one reads in the U.S. newspapers and what one hears in the barrios and villages of Venezuela, places where the elite do not tread. Adults are entering literacy programs, senior citizens are at last receiving their pensions, and children are not charged registration to enter the public schools. Health care and housing have improved dramatically.
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Breaking The Silence

here is a must see video by John Pilger on the so called "war on terror".

peace,
jure

U.S. vs. Venezuela...

Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Replay of Chile and Nicaragua?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

You can set your watch by it. The minute some halfway decent government in Latin America begins to reverse the order of things and give the have-nots a break from the grind of poverty and wretchedness, the usual suspects in El Norte rouse themselves from the slumber of indifference and start barking furiously about democratic norms. It happened in 1973 in Chile; we saw it again in Nicaragua in the 1980s; and here’s the same show on summer rerun in Venezuela, pending the August 15 recall referendum of President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez is the best thing that has happened to Venezuela’s poor in a very long time. His government has actually delivered on some of its promises, with improved literacy rates and more students getting school meals. Public spending has quadrupled on education and tripled on healthcare, and infant mortality has declined. The government is promoting one of the most ambitious land-reform programs seen in Latin America in decades.

Most of this has been done under conditions of economic sabotage. Oil strikes, a coup attempt and capital flight have resulted in about a 4 percent decline in GDP for the five years that Chávez has been in office. But the economy is growing at close to 12 percent this year, and with world oil prices near $40 a barrel, the government has extra billions that it’s using for social programs. So naturally the United States wants him out, just as the rich in Venezuela do. Chávez was re-elected in 2000 for a six-year term. A US-backed coup against him was badly botched in 2002.

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here’s José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s military apparatus. This time he’s holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don’t recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity.

The “international observers” recruited to save the rich traditionally include the Organization of American States and the Carter Center; in the case of the Venezuelan recall they have mustered dead on schedule. On behalf of the opposition, they exerted enormous pressure on the country’s independent National Electoral Council during the signature-gathering and verification process. Eventually the head of the OAS mission had to be replaced by the OAS secretary general because of his unacceptable public statements.

The Carter Center’s team is headed by Jennifer McCoy, whose forthcoming book, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, leans heavily against the government. One of its contributors is José Antonio Gil of the Datanalysis Polling Firm, most often cited for US media analysis. The Los Angeles Times quoted Gil on what to do: “And he can see only one way out of the political crisis surrounding President Hugo Chávez. ‘He has to be killed,’ he said, using his finger to stab the table in his office far above this capital’s filthy streets. ‘He has to be killed.’”

Media manipulation is an essential part of the script, and here, right on cue, comes Bill Clinton’s erstwhile pollster, Stan Greenberg, still a leading Democratic Party strategist. Greenberg is under contract to RCTV, one of the right-wing media companies leading the Venezuelan opposition and recall effort. It’s a pollster’s dream job. Not only does he have enormous resources against an old-fashioned, politically unsophisticated poor people’s movement, but his firm has something comrades back home can only fantasize about: control over the Venezuelan media. Imagine if the right wing controlled almost the entire media during Clinton’s impeachment.

That’s the situation in Venezuela. Just think what Greenberg’s associate, Mark Feierstein-a veteran of similar NED efforts in ousting the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections-can do with this kind of totalitarian media control. NED? That’s the National Endowment for Democracy, praised not so long ago by John Kerry, who, like Bush, publicly craves the ouster of Chávez.

The NED is coming over the hill arm in arm with the CIA and CIA-backed institutions in the AFL-CIO, where John Sweeney’s team has dismally failed to clean house. The NED has helped fund the opposition to Chávez to the tune of more than $1 million a year. Among the recipients are organizations whose leaders actually supported the April 2002 coup-they signed the decree that overthrew the elected president and vice president and abolished the country’s democratic institutions, including the Constitution, Supreme Court and National Assembly. The coup was thwarted only because millions of Venezuelans rallied for Chávez.

Left out of the coup government, despite his support for it, was Carlos Ortega, head of the CTV (Central Labor Federation). The AFL’s Solidarity Center, successor to the CIA-linked AIFLD, gets more than 80 percent of its funding from the NED and USAID and has funneled NED money to Ortega and his collaborators. The Solidarity Center has been up to its ears in opposition plotting, a reprise of the Allende years, when the AFL helped destroy Chilean democracy. The AFL has denied any role, but Rob Collier, an excellent San Francisco Chronicle reporter, recently gave a detailed refutation of AFL apologetics in an exchange in the current New Labor Forum. “In Venezuela,” he writes, “the AFL-CIO has blindly supported a reactionary union establishment as it tried repeatedly to overthrow President Hugo Chávez-and, in the process, wrecked the country’s economy.

The CTV worked in lockstep with FEDECAMARAS, the nation’s business association, to carry out the three general strikes/lockouts” of 2001, 2002 and 2003. The CTV, Collier says, was directly involved in coup organizing, and its leader was scheduled to be part of the new junta.

The end of this particular drama has yet to be written. The left here in the United States could make a difference if it got off its haunches and threw itself into the fray.

The War of Error: Unraveling Bush's unwinnable battle

here is an (exerpt of an) excellent article written by my favorite political analyst/social critic, Manuel Valenzuela.

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The so-called “war on terror” was lost the moment George W. Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court. Of course at the time nobody could foresee what the fraud in Florida would help set free. At that moment the clandestine inevitability of the invasion of Iraq became a certain reality whose consequences we will absorb for the next several decades. True, 9/11 had yet to happen, but already fixations with Saddam Hussein were metastasizing throughout the self-righteous Bush administration. 9/11, more than anything else, became, politically, the perfect excuse needed to drag America into a war that had already been preordained by those with axes to grind, scores to settle, empires to expand and profits to make.

The dubiously named “war on terror” was lost the moment the cabal of neoconservatives usurped power in Washington, descending like a flock of vultures from their warmongering flight. At that moment delusion morphed with ideology, ignorance fused with zealotry and the neoconartist dream of an Iraqi invasion, already having been trumpeted for years, was put in motion. Pushed forward by those wishing to fight Israel’s enemies using American financial and military might, the Iraq war was born in dogmatic democratic delusion, historical and cultural ignorance and in criminal apathy for the over 600 American soldiers sent to die for causes having nothing to do with fighting for freedom or democracy or for fighting terror.

Thus was born the War of Error, a war unlike all others, self-defeating and perpetual, that instead of solving problems has and will continue to exacerbate them. Thus was born a War of Proxy, of Greed, Deceit, Criminality and Stupidity. A war not of necessity but of choice; a war that only enraged an already burning world opinion resulting from America’s continual devastation of people’s life, health, opportunity, ability and freedom through the incessant mechanisms of oppression and exploitation arising out of the debilitating forays into global empire building.

A war of excuses, not principle, of vengeance, not morality, of unleashing death and destruction, not winning hearts and minds has only served to make the world a much more dangerous, sinister place.
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Venezuela Calls U.S. Report on Human Traffiking "Cynical"

america once again defames venezuela....

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The State Department placed Venezuela on its lowest, "Tier 3," list of countries that may face unilateral U.S. sanctions for "not fully comply with the minimum standards (according to U.S. law) and are not making significant efforts to do so."

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The report has generated some controversy in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez will be facing a recall referendum scheduled for August 15. Venezuelan officials have mentioned the U.S. presidential election as a factor in what they call are U.S. government attacks against Chavez. Presidential candidate John Kerry has accused president George W. Bush of not doing enough with regard to the Venezuelan political situation.

According to the report, “Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Brazilian and Colombian women and girls are trafficked to and through Venezuela. Venezuelans are trafficked internally for the domestic sex trade and to Western Europe, particularly Spain.”

The report also says that "the Government of Venezuela does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so."

Venezuelan officials dismissed the report as part of a U.S. government campaign to discredit the Chavez administration as the recall referendum approaches.

“We understand that the electoral campaign both in Venezuela and the United States, forces U.S. authorities to act the way they are acting,” said Arevalo Mendez, Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations. Mendez said that although U.S. authorities are somewhat perplexed by Chavez’s acceptance of the recall referendum against him, “a scenery not expected by them,” the report is an act of cowardice.

“This new aggression fits into the same campaign that led the U.S. to support the criminal coup d’etat of 2002, the oil industry sabotage, the electoral fraud, and the violent street protests known as guarimbas,” Mendez said.

“We denounce once again that the United States is using the delicate issue of Human Rights as a pretext to coerce, delegitimize o impose unilateral sanctions, instead of using the tools of international right. Venezuela is a signer of the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. Such Convention has not been ratified by them [the U.S.], and instead of respecting the multilateral instruments, the try to utilize their own laws in an unilateral manner in order to impose their will on other countries,” said the official.

Mendez said that the trafficking of humans is an international problem that is more prevalent in developed countries. “It is ironic that the U.S. is pretending to accuse others, when it is one of the countries that have achieved the least in that matter,” he said. “An important part of that trafficking enters through Miami, practically converting the South of Florida into a distribution hub. Once there, the victims are sent to exquisite markets of high demand such as Atlanta, New, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he added.

The official said that the U.S. government “delegitimized in the eyes of the international community” should not criticize others for violations that also occur in their country, where prostitution and narcotraffic is promoted and financed. “Writer Michael Moore should be read more,” he said.

“The numbers on prostitution, illegal traffic of all kinds, and the permanent violation of human rights in the U.S. and against other nations, places the U.S. government between the permanent violation of those rights, cynicism and arrogance,” said the official.

“Has Colin Powell forgotten that 7% of U.S. agricultural workers are between 10 and 17 years old, and that come mostly from the trafficking of people?,” he asked.

Dementia in the White House

According to Mendez, most of the world’s sexual tourists come form the United States and many of them have been condemned for sexual abuses to children in different countries. He said that it is cynical to accuse other countries of violating women’s rights when “the horrors of Iraqi jails, where young people of both genders have been raped, clearly show that dementia has taken over the White House.”

Mendez said the that the U.S. has been accused by Human Rights organizations as the biggest producer of child pornography, and questioned “the morals of a regime that watches perplexed how its youth gets killed in schools and neighborhoods.”

The vice-minister questioned the U.S. practice of the death penalty to those who committed crimes while being minors, and the U.S. refusal to sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been supported by 192 countries, including Venezuela.

He added that the U.S. has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the Inter American Convention Against Terrorism, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. “This situation places the U.S. in a state of international marginality, as they don’t feel obligated to answer before humanity for their demential and genocidal conduct,” he concluded.
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like i already said, this is what rich people do to the poor who disagree with IMF/neo-liberal western policies. look at what happened to aristide in haiti. look at what IMF policies did in argentina. a first world coutnry turning into a third world country....

this is how the rich do it:

1.) Defamation
2.) Economic sanctions
3.) Military intervention

Colombia's New Border Brigade and the Venezuelan Referendum

one day the (corporate) media says one thing, another day, they say something else.
one day they said they need the tanks to prevent insurgent.
now it is because of drug trafficking.
what will it be tomorrow?

the following is an excellent article...

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A few months ago, the commander of the Venezuelan Army, Raul Baduel, described something that worried him (1). Colombia had just purchased 46 AMX-30 battle tanks from Spain. The media claimed the tanks were to fight drug trafficking, but that hardly seemed plausible. Baduel suspected that the tanks were going to end up on the Venezuelan border.

This deployment was blandly reported in El Tiempo, Colombia's national newspaper, yesterday (2). The 46 tanks will be part of a new Brigade, especially created, to 'patrol the border'. Four battalions and a Special Forces group form this new Brigade. The tanks are supposed to arrive in (and watch the timing carefully, for we will revisit it) August.

The El Tiempo article refers to the need for the tanks in order to "defend Colombia" from an "eventual incursion from Venezuela". The Brigade is also charged with the defense of the Wayuu indigenous people, who have been victims of massacres by "illegal armed groups". Thus, the indigenous can rest secure under the protection of the very army that is killing them directly or working with the paramilitaries ("illegal armed groups" who happen to work with the army) who are killing them.

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It is not coincidental that the tanks for the Venezuelan border are arriving in August. The Venezuelan recall referendum, when Venezuelans will vote on whether or not to recall President Hugo Chavez, will take place on August 15. It will take place, that is, if the Venezuelan opposition thinks they can win. Since the Venezuelan opposition could not likely win a fair vote, it is more likely that the whole referendum exercise, like the coup attempt in April 2002 and the 'National Strike' (3) later that year and into 2003, is just another part of the destabilization campaign against the Chavez government. In March 2003, just after the 'National Strike' collapsed, Colombia's army raided across the Venezuelan border (4). Just in May of 2004, another plot involving Colombian paramilitaries was foiled by Venezuela, though the details have not fully emerged. According to an AFP report Venezuelan police are still finding caches of weapons and individuals linked to the plot. (5)

The Colombian military and paramilitary have always been an essential part of the destabilization campaign against Venezuela. The timing of the posting of the armoured Brigade to the Venezuelan border, coinciding with the Venezuelan referendum and coming just months after an attempted paramilitary infiltration, is not coincidental.

In the countryside, the Colombian army often fights as follows: paramilitaries infiltrate a community and attempt to draw a response from the guerrillas. In the rare cases where guerrillas respond, the paramilitaries back off and the army replaces them, attacking the guerrillas with heavy weapons.

This is also the ideal formula to create a border war: A paramilitary infiltration, which the Venezuelan Army would try to repel, whose defenses the Colombian Army's new heavy tanks, conveniently posted on 'border patrol', would be able to smash through once the initial 'incident' was set. This would then be presented as 'Venezuelan aggression', and no doubt the US papers would set to work writing about how Chavez started a war to prevent the referendum. The war could then quickly change from one between Colombia and Venezuela to one between the US and Venezuela. Perhaps a repeat of the 3,000 or so civilians killed in Panama's poorest neighbourhoods in 1989, along with a media campaign about 'saving' them, while showing happy rich Venezuelans applauding on television, could follow? (This is an imperfect analogy: Noriega actually was a dictator. Chavez is not.)
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Colombian military sets up new brigade 10 miles from Venezuelan border

military intervention?

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According to Colombian news sources, Colombia has plans to set up a military base, just 10 kilometers from the Venezuelan border, something that obviously will curl hairs and ruffle Venezuelan's Armed Force (FAN).

Bogota broadsheet, El Tiempo states that 46 AMX30 tanks, recently purchased from Spain, will be part of the new contingent of the Castilletes garrison further north.

The region in question is called the Guajira, which is split between Colombia and Venezuela with Wayuu and other indigenous groups forming the main sector of the population on both sides of the border.

The 10th Brigade is expected to be up and running within the next few months and will have jurisdiction along the border with Venezuela from Castilletes to Santander Norte Department. Currently, there is a small police force and a Colombian Air force monitoring station.

* The purpose of the brigade, consisting of 4 battalions and a special forces command, is to prevent Colombian guerrillas from crossing over into and from Venezuela.
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tanks in a jungle are not suited for stopping guerillas/paramilitaries sneaking past them into foreign territory. tanks are useless in fighting guerillas in mountains and jungles.

this article coincides nicely with a more recent article:
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21670
21 paramilitaries captured along the Venezuelan border with Colombia

tanks are used for invasion, not defense. especially in a jungle. seems like the tanks are destined for deployment on the frontier with Venezuela.

this is a good article:
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=20951
Washington prepares military intervention against Venezuela

The Washington Post Should Support Democracy in Venezuela Instead of Spreading Misinformation

more media bias....
check out the differences/inaccuracies between the reportings of washington post and what is actually happeneing in venezuela

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CONTACT THE WASHINGTON POST TO SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA

Today, 26 May 2004, the Washington Post ran an Op-Ed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calling on the opposition and the Bush administration to commit to respect the results of the signature repair process that will take place this coming weekend The Op-Ed is available online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55957-2004May25.html, and is included at the end of this e-mail.

Opposite the Op-Ed, the Washington Post's editorial page printed a factually inaccurate attack on the Venezuelan government (This editorial is available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55981-2004May25.html). Moreover, the Op-Ed will undoubtedly provoke a flurry of e-mail from right-wing radicals in the U.S. seeking to spread misinformation about Venezuela.

Therefore, the Venezuela Information Office is asking people to write publishable letters to the editor of the Washington Post, in order to provide factual information about recent events in Venezuela and point out the factual inaccuracies contained in the Post's editorial.
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peace,
jure

From Media War to Armed Struggle in Venezuela?

here the rich go again bashing the opposers of the IMF/Neo-Liberal policies.

1.)Defamation
2.)Possible sanctions/embargoes - (though will not happen in venezuela)
3.)Military intervention...

In the coming days/weeks/months we will probably see increased media bias/propaganda, as well as unfounded lies to "justify" yet another illegal war.

Hugo Chavez, i wish you all the best!

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Beyond the latest pronouncements of Roger Noriega or Colin Powell and the “repair” just completed process, all indications are that the most radical sectors of Venezuela’s opposition intend to repeat a similar script to the one of April 2002. To organize a massacre and, with the support of the mass media, to accuse the Venezuelan armed forces—and in this way the commander in chief, Hugo Chavez—of genocide, so as to appeal for a foreign intervention.

These groups—encouraged by the fact that they were the ruling class in Venezuela for over forty years—have various problems. First, they have no concept of nation or sovereignty and a total lack of patriotism. Since they did not achieve a landing of U.S. marines (which more than one businessman called for via the private mass media), are now trying to incite such an action via Colombian assassins.

When on the last day of October 2002 President Chavez told the foreign press that he was aware of the fact that he would be governing for a long time in the midst of an inevitable low-intensity conflict, he recognized that the country was heading towards a “colombianization” of its domestic politics.
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Colombia just "happens" to be a major U.S. ally in South America.

One only needs to take a few looks at the U.S. media, to find out the lies and propaganda coming out from the corporate media.

Venezuela and its President, Hugo Chavez are continuously being demonized by western media.

They should get acquainted with the constitution of Venezuela, and realize, that Hugo Chavez has introduced to Venezuela, the most progressive and democratic constitution Venezuela has ever had.

peace,
jure

effects of globalization

the rich keep getting richer, while the poor become poorer...

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Would anyone dare to deny the social and human consequences of the neoliberal globalization imposed on the world?

- If 25 years ago five hundred million people were going hungry, today over 800 million are starving.

-In the poor countries, 150 million children are born underweight, which raises their risks of death as well as of mental and physical underdevelopment.

-325 million children do not attend school.

-Infant mortality rate under one year is 12 times higher than it is in the rich countries.

-33 thousand children die every day in the Third World of curable illnesses.

-Two million girls are forced into prostitution.

-85 percent of the world population made up by poor countries consumes only 30 percent of the energy, 25 percent of the metals and 15 percent of the timber.

-There are billions of full illiterates or functional illiterates on the planet.

How can the imperialist leaders and those who share in the plundering of the world speak of human rights and even use such words as freedom and democracy in this brutally exploited world?
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and the poor ones always get attacked by the rich west, especially if they oppose the neo-liberal globalist policies of the west. first comes the defamation, then the embargoes and finally war....

peace,
jure

enron...

don't you just love these oh-so-honest rich corporations?

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Tapes given to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, show Enron and its partners in Nevada gouged consumers and forced utilities in that state— and others throughout the west— to sign expensive long-term contracts at the height of the crisis.

"I want to see what pain and heartache this is going to cause Nevada Power Company," says one Enron trader on the tapes. "I want to f--k with Nevada for a while."

"What do you mean?" a second trader asks.

"I just, I'm still in the mood to screw with people, OK?" the first trader answers.
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Presidential Debates Likely to Exclude Nader

in a democracy, shouldn't ALL candidates have equal opportunities to share their views to the public??
or does america just not want third-party candidates becoming, or having a chance to become, president in a "two-party" system?

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"This is a debate commission funded by corporate interests and controlled by the two major parties," said Kevin Zeese, a Nader spokesman. "The standards seem intentionally designed to keep out alternative voices."

Zeese said the commission should include any candidate who is on enough state ballots to have a mathematical shot at winning the presidency.
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americans in support of hugo chavez

glad to see americans who understand what the bolivarian revolution of hugo chavez is all about.

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President Chavez’ goal, and the goal of peaceful Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela is to invest the country’s oil wealth in the people of the nation. Already many social reforms and programs have produced impressive benefits to the great majority of the population, many of whom have lived in dire poverty for decades. For example since 1998, 3 million people have received access to potable water for the first time and another 1 million have received sewage service. The military has built or refurbished over 30 thousand homes, built 700 new schools and refurbished over 2 thousand--employing 36 thousand new teachers. Over the past year 8 hundred thousand illiterates have graduated from the second phase of a 3 phase literacy program, 28 thousand children have received free vaccinations, and 18 million patients have been seen by clinic doctors in areas that had no medical facilities just 2 years ago. Thanks to micro-credits and grassroots empowerment, there are over 10 thousand cooperatives with over 6.5 thousand members. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone into the hands of women-owned, small businesses and cooperatives through the Women’s Bank. Landless campesinos have received over 2.5 million acres of productive land and over 30 thousand titles have been given to urban squatters. The airwaves have been opened up to accommodate dozens of independent radio and TV broadcasters who provide much needed uncensored news. These are just some of the current national programs; there are also tens of thousands of state, local, and community projects in complement. Mr. Kerry, in the past a minority of elite controlled the oil revenues of Venezuela; now the wealth of Venezuela belongs to all Venezuelans.

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more on ronald reagan

an exerpt from gregpalast.com

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You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, I have to. Ronald Reagan was a conman. A coward. A killer.

In 1987 I found myself stuck in a little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis. People don't die of TB if they get antibiotics. But Reagan had put a embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government the people had elected.
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i wish hugo chavez lots of luck in venezuela. george "dubya" bush doesn't like the democratically elected chavez government. kerry is no different from bush in this issue. vote nader!

peace,
jure

nader or no-one

this is for all who are against capitalization, big business, and multinational corporations... :-)

an excellent article (interview pat buchanan does with ralph nader), where ralph nader gives his thoughts on capitalization and the power of the big multinational corporations.

http://www.amconmag.com/2004_06_21/cover.html

here are some exerpts:

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Concentrated corporate power violates many principles of capitalism. For example, under capitalism, owners control their property. Under multinational corporations, the shareholders don’t control their corporation. Under capitalism, if you can’t make the market respond, you sink. Under big business, you don’t go bankrupt; you go to Washington for a bailout. Under capitalism, there is supposed to be freedom of contract. When was the last time you negotiated a contract with banks or auto dealers? They are all fine-print contracts. The law of contracts has been wiped out for 99 percent of contracts that ordinary consumers sign on to. Capitalism is supposed to be based on law and order. Corporations get away with corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. And finally, capitalism is premised on a level playing field; the most meritorious is supposed to win. Tell that to a small inventor or a small business up against McDonald’s or a software programmer up against Microsoft.

Giant multinational corporations have no allegiance to any country or community other than to control them or abandon them. So what we have now is the merger of big business and big government to further subsidize costs or eliminate risks or guarantee profits by our government.

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RN: I’m not expecting conservatives to change their minds on certain issues that we disagree on, but if we look at the issues where we have common positions, they reach a level of gravity that would lead conservatives to stop being taken for granted by the corporate Republicans and send them a message by voting for my independent candidacy.

Here are the issues. One, conservatives are furious with the Bush regime because of the fantastic deficits as far as the eye can see. That was a betrayal of Bush’s positions, and it was a reversal of what Bush found when he came to Washington.

Conservatives are very upset about their tax dollars going to corporate welfare kings because that undermines market competition and is a wasted use of their taxes.

Conservatives are upset about the sovereignty-shredding WTO and NAFTA. I wish they had helped us more when we tried to stop them in Congress because, with a modest conservative push, we would have defeated NAFTA because it was narrowly passed. If there was no NAFTA, there wouldn’t have been a WTO.

Conservatives are also very upset with a self-styled conservative president who is encouraging the shipment of whole industries and jobs to a despotic Communist regime in China. That is what I mean by the distinction between corporate Republicans and conservative Republicans.

Next, conservatives, contrary to popular belief, believe in law and order against corporate crime, fraud, and abuse, and they are not satisfied that the Bush administration has done enough.

Conservatives are also upset about the Patriot Act, which they view as big government, privacy-invading, snooping, and excessive surveillance. They are not inaccurate in that respect.

And finally, two other things. They don’t like “Leave No Child Behind” because it is a stupidly conceived federal regulation of local school systems through misguided and very fraudulent multiple-choice testing impositions.

And conservatives are aghast that a born-again Christian president has done nothing about rampant corporate pornography and violence directed to children and separating children from their parents and undermining parental authority.

If you add all of those up, you should have a conservative rebellion against the giant corporation in the White House masquerading as a human being named George W. Bush. Just as progressives have been abandoned by the corporate Democrats and told,”You got nowhere to go other than to stay home or vote for the Democrats,” this is the fate of the authentic conservatives in the Republican Party.

I noticed this a long time ago, Pat. I once said to Bill Bennett, “Would you agree that corporatism is on a collision course with conservative values?” and he said yes.

The impact of giant corporations, commercialism, direct marketing to kids, sidestepping parents, selling them junk food, selling them violence, selling them sex and addictions, selling them the suspension of their socialization process—years ago conservatives spoke out on that, but it was never transformed into a political position. It was always an ethical, religious value position. It is time to take it into the political arena.
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peace,
jure

ronald reagan

news about the passing away of ronald reagan have been circulating all around mainstream media outlets for a few days now.

what the media presents, or wants to present to us, was a noble, humble, good, honest christian man who defeated communism in the former soviet union.

it is so often stated that ronald contributed to the fall of the soviet union with his star-wars program which the soviets could no keep up with. however, the soviet union was already in a dismal state by the time mikhail gorbatchov took position as the chairman of the communist party, that it was just a matter of time before the USSR would cease to exist. this would have happened with or without the help of ronald reagan.
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Reagan's Star Wars project did not bankrupt the Soviet Union into reform, as his admirers claim. In repeated statements as well as his budget allocations Gorbachev made it clear Moscow would not bother to match a dubious weapons system which could not give Washington "first-strike capability" for at least another 15 years, if ever.

The Soviet Union imploded for internal reasons, not least the erratic way Gorbachev reacted to the contradictory processes set in motion by his own reforms. Reagan was merely an uncomprehending bystander. His acceptance in his second term of detente was a u-turn which millions of peace activists in Europe had been demanding.

It was detente that made the end of the cold war possible, and without Reagan's blind anti-communism it could have come at least four years earlier.
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also, what the media "forgets" to present to us is the other side of ronald reagan...

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Can we remember effects of his deregulation policies that: (1)

Stopped the cleaning up of federal nuclear weapons facilities?

Resulted in bank interest rates becoming more competitive, but the crushing of smaller banks by the larger institutions.

Failed to make American goods competitive in the world market, and which led to increased consolidation rather than competition.

Resulted in an increase in natural gas prices. It also eased some of the country's dependence on foreign fuel but what is the level of dependence on foreign oil today?

That dropped airfares on high-traffic routes between major cities but included a massive increase in fares for short, low-traffic flights.

That restored some short-term competition to the marketplace but in the long term, competition also led to increased business failures and consolidation.

That gave birth to the Savings & Loan scandal, the largest theft in the history of the world, robbing the US tax payers of $1.4 Trillion Dollars.

In eight Reagan years, the gap between rich and poor Americans increased to more than it had been for half a century.
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and what about those weapons sold to iran to finance the contras in nicaragua?
in the hunt of one man, (ortega) an estimated 10-30000 people perished...

what about reagans special envoy, donald rumsfeld, shaking hands with the now deposed dictator of iraq, saddam hussein? the u.s. (and most of the western countries including germany and france) backing of iraq in the iraq-iran war, helping saddam to arm his troops (with chemical weapons) in a long war where millions died....

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Washington said nothing publicly, but noted "almost daily" Iraqi use of chemical weapons in internal reports.

"We have recently received additional information confirming Iraqi use of chemical weapons," a November 1, 1983 State Department memo said. "We also know that Iraq has acquired a CW production capability, primarily from western firms, including possibly a US foreign subsidiary."

It said "our best present chance of influencing cessation of CW use may be in the context of informing Iraq of these measures."

Washington did not publicly denounce Iraqi use of chemical weapons until March, 1984 after it was documented in a UN study.

The Reagan administration opened full diplomatic relations with Baghdad in November, 1984. Iraqi chemical attacks continued not only on Iranian forces but also on Kurdish civilians, notably at Hallabja in 1987.

For its support, Pollack wrote, Washington got a bulwhark against Iran, cheap oil and Iraqi support for peace neogtiations with Israel.
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in this time of universal deceit, it is important not to blindly accept everything the corporate controlled media shows us and wants us to hear.
especially in a time of war, propaganda is widely used (by governments) to influence people and to gain public support for more aggression against humanity.

a few good links i found while doing some research...
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_8873.shtml
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_8824.shtml
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_8888.shtml

peace,
jure

testing...

testing...one...two...
seems to work.

more and more blogs are being started up, so i thought i would do the same.

a bit about me: i am very much anti-war, and pro-peace, and my posts that will follow will go along these lines.

the point of this all: to share my views and thoughts to anyone who stumbles across this site, and with those (like me) who are looking for answers in a time of universal deceit...

thats it for now, i will take some time to get acquainted with blogging, and making the site look better.

peace,
jure