Noam Chomsky's topics - tribe.net

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

2008-04-18T19:48:21Z

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

The Most Wanted List, Chomsky on international terrorism

2008-03-11T17:49:55Z

Check out the article here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174899/noam_chomsky_terrorists_wanted_the_world_over

posted in Noam Chomsky - 2 replies

Conspiracy History compilation DVDs torrents

2008-03-06T13:44:58Z

**************************************************

Greetings to all my relations.

This is the last step of our project History Watch. If History is
defined and known by the texts, we can now add to this definition the
recorded events of the filmed archives. Animated images are harder to
deny than printed words. Our objective is to spread out freely some of
the little broadcast, even hidden informations about our collective
History.

We put online a collection of 391 documentaries and other selected and
recut videos, to offer to a wide public the best of the infos
available on the net in english and in french. If you are interested,
you have the time, the right equipment and connection, all you have to
do is open the joint document and decompress it if needed (but normaly
your system should do it automaticaly). You'll find therein nine links
that will open the torrents for the nine DVDs we compiled (around 4.6
Gig each, for a total of a little over 41 G, being over 100 hours of
videos).

Otherwise, you can go directly to btjunkie.com and search for these titles.

11 Septembre 2001 - 9-11
Bush family & friends
Capitalist & Communist regimes
Capitalist conspiracy
Mind Kontrol - Secret Programs
New World Order - Secret Societies
Secret services - cover up - covert ops
Secret weapons - UFO
Terrorism Theories propaganda

Torrents are a system of peer to peer data transfer. The more people
download a torrent, the faster it spreads and the longer it stays on
the net. If you don't have a bittorrent software, we suggest that you
download uTorrent on utorrent.com. If you want to participate in
facilitating the diffusion of these infos about our collective
History, download these torrents on as many computers as possible,
whether it is in cybercafes. It takes one or two minutes to open up
the links and the downloading will keep proceeding on its own.

Please spread this out, take part in this action for social education
on a planetary scale. Thanks.

For more info: watch.history@gmail.com History Watch

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

Business networking and Events

2008-02-17T19:50:35Z

i would like to invite my Tribe network to join me on www.connectture.com - its a social business network based in Europe with a growing base of users from all over the world. Easy way of keeping track of your Business Network.

Cheers

Sarah

posted in Noam Chomsky - 1 reply

Does Chomsky have anything to say about Sibel Edmonds?

2008-01-23T08:33:47Z

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

Chomsky on Ron Paul

2008-01-10T20:42:04Z

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sunday, December 02, 2007 (06:21:21)

Posted by personman

* Update: I E-mailed Prof. Chomsky for confirmation. Z magazine is an official source, but some Ron Paul supporters are calling the forum comments a hoax or a fake. View Prof. Chomsky's response here.

From the znet sustainers forum:

Questioner: Hello Mr. Chomsky. I’m assuming you know who Ron Paul is. And I’m also assuming you have a general idea about his positions. Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:
- He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).

Noam Chomsky: Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.

- He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)

Noam Chomsky: “Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.

- He defends workers right to organize (so long as owners have the right to argue against it).

Noam Chomsky: Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you’ve already mentioned.

There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power — itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.

- He proposes staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless his home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).

Noam Chomsky: He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.

I really can’t find differences between your positions and his.

Noam Chomsky: There’s a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn’t themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being “broken” are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based — the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we’re at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).

So I have these questions:

1) Can you please tell me the differences between your schools of “Libertarianism”?

Noam Chomsky: There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion — on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.

2) Can you please tell me what role “private property” and “ownership” have in your school of “Libertarianism”?

Noam Chomsky: That would have to be worked out by free communities, and of course it is impossible to respond to what I would prefer in abstraction from circumstances, which make a great deal of difference, obviously.

3) Would you support Ron Paul, if he was the Republican presidential candidate…and Hilary Clinton was his Democratic opponent?

Noam Chomsky: No.

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/print/sid=74.html

posted in Noam Chomsky - 9 replies

Generic Chomsky Topic

2008-01-01T23:23:03Z

......from Pg.79 of the Foucalt debate book:

"The United States is exceptional also in that there is no significant pressure for worker participation in management, let alone real workers' control. These issues are not alive in the United States, as they are throughout Western Europe. And the absence of any significant socialist voice or discussion is again quite a striking feature of the United States, as compared to other societies of comparable social structure and level of economic developement."

Aside from invoking an actual Chomsky dialogue on this tribe (grrr!), I am interested in viewpoints based upon both American observations, as well as those who live/have worked/work-studied in Europe of late.
The EU has, obviously, changed the rules of the game in many previously Demo.Socialist influenced states in Europe, since Noam wrote this passage. What I'm curious to discover is whether these workers are still finding support from the top-down; a sense of that 'worker control' now that multinationalism and homogenized capitalism has sucked so much out of the culture of work throughout the world.

posted in Noam Chomsky - 1 reply

The Socialist Kurdish PKK Reject the Soviet Model

2007-12-30T21:09:43Z

Turkey is now bombing and shelling Kurds in Iraq once again under the excuse of trying to destroy the PKK. This is a continuation of the horrible oppression and repression faced by Kurds that I wrote about in:

Kurdish Culture, Repression, Women’s Rights, and Resistance
http://people.tribe.net/steveargue2/blog/9e471dea-4791-4fb7-afe6-7a23f092e9dc

One of the criticisms I faced from those backing the repression against the Kurds was the fact that the PKK is a revolutionary socialist organization. An attempt was made to equate the leadership of the PKK with Stalin.

Yet, here is part of what the PKK says about the Soviet Union and socialism in their program:

"The Soviet Union has disappeared, the Soviet Bloc has dissolved itself, and there have been major developments in the socialist movement. The phase of Soviet-dominated socialism is finished. That was a phase of primitive and brutal socialism. Now, a new phase of socialism has begun, namely its rich phase. Our party is the embodiment of one of the most significant socialist movements during this new phase, and we plan to live up to our duties in our revolutionary work."

I have not seen a detailed analysis by the PKK of the Soviet model, but I see their rejection of that model as encouraging. The PKK are a popular group among Turkish Kurds that have gained that support through their struggle for socialism against the horrible oppression and repression faced by both Kurds and women in inside of Turkey. No matter what the position of the PKK on the Soviet Union or anything else, I support the Kurdish right, as an oppressed people, to self-determination.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, were swept to power in a popular revolution that called for an end to the war with Germany, land reform, and socialism. Besides the betterment this revolution meant for the workers and peasants in general, including access to healthcare and education, giant strides forward were made for oppressed nationalities, Jews, women's rights, and gay rights. Before the revolution, under Czarist rule, Jews were routinely slaughtered in the thousands in government-sponsored pogroms. Peasants were the property of feudal landlords, and huge numbers of drafted young peasants were dying in the inter-imperialist war with Germany. This all ended with the Russian Revolution. In addition, gay rights and the right to abortion were legalized for the first time in any country with the birth of the Soviet Union and backward anti-woman practices such as bride-price and forced marriage were made illegal. Priorities were made of literacy and meeting the basic needs of the people. These were huge advances made by a revolution that had inherited a poor economically backward nation, soon to be further devastated by civil war and the invasion of many imperialist armies.

Yet, Rosa Luxemburg, a key leader of the German and international communist movement, while praising the advances made by the Russian Revolution, did not excuse the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union. She saw the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in a completely different way than Lenin and Trotsky. She saw this simply as the toiling majority becoming the dictators over the capitalist minority that once held power. For that majority to actually be in charge, however, they would need democratic organs, universal suffrage, and democratic rights. For Lenin and Trotsky, the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" fit more into bourgeois models of individual dictatorship by those in power. As Rosa Luxemburg states in her 1918 work, the “Russian Revolution”:

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only a bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders with inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule [...] a dictatorship, to be sure, but not dictatorship of the proletariat [...].

A different position by Lenin and Trotsky more in league with that of Rosa Luxemburg would have produced a much better and more open society that would have made Stalin's type of rise to power through skullduggery, corruption, and terror within the ranks of the party much more difficult.

Rosa Luxemburg did not see the question as being counterpoised between bourgeois democracy (democracy for the rich as we have in the United States) on the one hand (defended by "socialists" who had betrayed socialism and become administrators of capitalist exploitation and war), and dictatorial communism on the other. Instead, she rejected both and fought for a socialist society with nationalized industries where the working class has democratic control.

It is this essential banner of democratic revolutionary socialism that is being revived in the struggle for human rights against brutal U.S. backed capitalist dictatorships and other capitalist governments in the struggle for human rights such as language rights, women's rights, medicine, food, clean drinking water, for environmental survival, an end to U.S. imposed wars, and an end to capitalist and imperialist exploitation. Forward in the struggle for democratic revolutionary socialism!

posted in Noam Chomsky - 2 replies

Early Years of the FBI's Secret War On Political Freedom

2007-12-24T21:49:52Z

Early Years of the FBI's Secret War On Political Freedom

Below are excerpts from Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, a book that documents one of the most notorious programs of FBI spying and harassment. Much of the material for the book was pryed out of the government as a result of a successful suit filed by the Socialist Workers Party against the FBI and other spy agencies that had engaged in decades of illegal disruption activities against the party. The excerpts are reprinted with the permission of Pathfinder. Subheads are provided by the Militant.

BY NOAM CHOMSKY

From the evidence now available, it appears that the first FBI disruption program (apart from the Communist Party) was launched in August 1960 against groups advocating independence for Puerto Rico. In October 1961, the "SWP Disruption Program" was put into operation against the Socialist Workers Party. The grounds offered, in a secret FBI memorandum, were the following: the party had been "openly espousing its line on a local and national basis through running candidates for public office and strongly directing and/or supporting such causes as Castro's Cuba and integration problems-in the South."

The SWP Disruption Program, put into operation during the Kennedy administration, reveals very clearly the FBI's understanding of its function: to block legal political activity that departs from orthodoxy, to disrupt opposition to state policy, to undermine the civil rights movement.

BY NELSON BLACKSTOCK

The Cointelpro plot to disrupt socialist election campaigns was concocted not because of any illegal activities by the SWP, but because, as J. Edgar Hoover said, socialist candidates were "openly" talking to people about their ideas.One Cointelpro operation that has come to light through the socialists' suit concerns the 1966 campaign of Judy White for governor of New York. This was during the period when the antiwar movement was beginning to have a major impact on the thinking of the American people. White was a leader of the antiwar movement. A broad layer of opponents of the war - including many radicals who were not particularly close to the SWP-had endorsed White as the only antiwar candidate in the race.

Campaign supporters worked hard to get the signatures necessary to obtain ballot status, which brought significant amount of attention from the media.

The FBI looked for a way to sabotage this campaign. They noticed that according to New York law, White was formally not old enough to hold the office of governor. The FBI tried to get this fact reported in the media in an attempt to discredit the campaign.

According to the documents, the FBI decided to rely on the Daily News to do the job for them, but the New York City CBS television affiliate did it instead. As the documents show the state legislature soon passed a law altering the election code to require that a candidate be old enough to assume an office in order to run for it.

FBI murder of Fred Hampton

Perhaps the most shocking story concerns the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police directed by the state's attorney's office in December 1969, in a predawn raid on a Chicago apartment. Hampton, one of the most promising leaders of the Black Panther party-particularly dangerous because of his opposition to violent acts or rhetoric and his success in community organizing-was shot while in bed, perhaps drugged first. Depositions in a civil suit in Chicago reveal that the chief of Panther security and Hampton's personal bodyguard, William O'Neal, was an FBI infiltrator. O'Neal gave his FBI "contacting agent," Roy Mitchell, a detailed floor plan of the apartment, which Mitchell turned over to the state's attorney's office shortly before the attack, along with "information" - of dubious veracity - that there were two illegal shotguns in the apartment. For his services, O'Neal was paid over $10,000 from January 1969 through July 1970, according to Mitchell's affidavit.O'Neal, incidentally, continued to report to Mitchell after the raid. He was taking part in meetings with the Hampton family and discussions between lawyers and clients, one of many such examples of violation of the lawyer-client relation.

The Starsky Case

Prominent in the ranks of teachers victimized by the FBI is Morris Starsky. In 1970 the FBI encouraged Starsky's dismissal from his job as a professor of philosophy at Arizona State University. The Phoenix office of the FBI sent an anonymous letter slandering him to a faculty committee reviewing his teaching contract.

In a memo dated May 31, 1968, the Phoenix FBI noted that local targets for Cointelpro were "pretty obvious.- It is apparent that New Left organizations and activities in the Phoenix metropolitan area have received their inspiration and leadership almost exclusively from the members of the faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Arizona State University(ASU), chiefly Assistant Professor MORRIS J. STARSKY."

To that description of himself, Starsky adds that he helped organize the first antiwar teach-in at ASU; he led a campus free-speech fight; he helped lead a successful campaign to win campus recognition for SDS; he participated in campus activities to support striking Tucson sanitation workers and a union organizing drive by Chicano laundry workers; he served as a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers party in 1968; he helped to reestablish the ASU chapter of the American Federation of Teachers; and he was the faculty adviser of the Young Socialist Alliance and the Student Mobilization Committee.

All that provoked quite a furor among right-wing state legislators and university regents. The Faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (whose members received the FBI's slanderous letters) held a hundred hours of public hearings on whether Starsky was entitled to teach at ASU. Three thousand students and over 250 professors signed petitions supporting Starsky's right to academic freedom.

The committee's members were not duped by the FBI's anonymous slanders, although they expressed surprise five years later when they learned that "A Concerned Alumnus" was really J. Edgar Hoover. The committee voted unanimously against dismissing Starsky. But the regents refused to renew his contract and he lost his job in June 1970. Starsky says that "it's sort of like being found innocent and executed anyway." Since ASU he has lost two teaching jobs in California for political reasons.

Targeting a Black candidate

"A review is being conducted of Clifton DeBerry's file to determine if there is anything derogatory in his background which might cause embarrassment to the SWP if publicly exposed."

Those words appear in a secret FBI memorandum dated October 17, 1963. Of the nearly 1,000 pages of Cointelpro files released in response to the SWP suit, more concern Clifton DeBerry than any other single individual. In 1964 DeBerry became the first Black person ever to run for president of the United States, when he was nominated by the SWP. In the early 1960s a Black nationalist mood was becoming visible in the ghettos of the North, and no one better articulated this new consciousness than Malcolm X.

"We began to make contact with Malcolm when he was still the main spokesman for the Nation of Islam," DeBerry said. "In late 1963 I went on a speaking tour. Malcolm was touring at the same time, and I would go to see him whenever I could."

It was during a tour stop in Chicago that the FBI arranged to have DeBerry arrested in order to create a scandal they hoped to use to discredit him. Just as DeBerry was about to address a socialist meeting, the Chicago police stormed into the building, hauled him to the station, and booked him on charges of nonsupport of his ex-wife.The FBI followed up this arrest by devoting enormous attention to trying to get the news media to report both this incident and DeBerry's earlier arrests for "labor trouble.-"

`Send troops to South not Vietnam'

"We of the Socialist Workers party say get all the U.S. troops, planes, and warships out of Vietnam-North and South," DeBerry demanded. "If as Johnson claims their purpose is to `protect democracy,' then send them to Mississippi and let them do some protecting of Black Americans there."

While the FBI was secretly plotting against the Black presidential candidate, he was publicly blasting the FBI.

After the disappearance of three civil rights workers slain by racists in Mississippi, DeBerry exposed the bureau's complicity.

Local cops, who were involved in the murders, had held the three in jail before they were killed. "While the three kidnapped youths were in jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi, their co-workers became fearful for their safety, and telephoned the FBI in Jackson. The FBI agent-refused to help and told the rights fighters that he wouldn't have any more dealings with them," DeBerry said.

During this period DeBerry's relationship with Malcolm continued to develop. "After his break with the Nation of Islam, I used to meet with him almost every Saturday when he was in the country. We would have discussions about politics-often comparing notes and checking up on what each other had been hearing about the developing nationalist response among Blacks," DeBerry recalled.

At the suggestion of Malcolm and his collaborator, James Shabazz, DeBerry spoke at a couple of classes at the Muslim Mosque, Inc., which Malcolm headed. "We were again touring at the same time, and our paths would often crisscross. Whenever I could I would attend his speeches. While he was too busy to make it to mine, he would send someone over," DeBerry remembered. "We had that kind of relationship."

A few months later Malcolm would be assassinated. The FBI's role in that event is a story that is yet to be told.

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

News Analysis: The Battle in Bolivia

2007-12-17T13:08:32Z

I thought that this article was pretty good. Missing is the fact that the nationalization of energy in Bolivia that has taken place under Evo Morales, nationalizations that were demanded by massive militant struggles of the working class, are probably the biggest issue in racist bourgeois and U.S. imperialist opposition to the Morales government. -Steven Argue

******
News Analysis: The Battle in Bolivia
By Roger Burbach, New America Media (12-04-07)
reprinted in the Berkeley Daily Planet (!)

While international attention is focusing on President Hugo Chavez and the Sunday referendum on the Venezuelan constitution, a conflict that is just as profound is shaking Bolivia. Evo Morales, the first Indian president of the country, is forcing a showdown with the oligarchy and the right wing political parties that have stymied efforts to draft a new constitution to transform the nation. He declares, “Dead or alive I will have a new constitution for the country by December 14,” the mandated date for the specially elected Constituent Assembly to present a constitution for the country to vote on by popular referendum.

A violent conflict that left three dead and hundreds injured erupted over the past weekend in the city of Sucre where the Constituent Assembly has been meeting. After more than a year of obstructionism by the right wing parties, Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and its allied parties that control 60 percent of the Assembly’s vote, approved the broad outlines of a new constitution designed to alleviate economic inequalities, codify a new agrarian reform program and end the apartheid system that the indigenous population has lived under for centuries.

The “New Left” presidents that have emerged in Latin America in recent years reflect a social insurgence that is challenging the old political leadership and demanding an economic alternative to the neo-liberal policies of Washington that favor foreign interests and the multinational corporations. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and even Chilean leaders are carrying out social and economic reforms, although with the possible exception of Ecuador under President Rafael Correa, these reforms are taking place with little or no defiance of their country’s dominant business and financial interests. Upheavals verging on a revolution are taking place in Venezuela and Bolivia.

In Bolivia the upheaval is very different from Venezuela’s in that it is lead by the Indian majority against the historically dominant “k’aras,” meaning whites and mestizos. The opposition to Morales is lead by the eastern city of Santa Cruz where the business elites and the right wing parties exercise political and economic control. In Sucre and some of the other major departmental (state) capitals where the whites and lighter-skinned peoples tend to concentrate, Santa Cruz has recruited allies, particularly among young university students who are acting as shock troops to confront indigenous organizations and members of the Constituent Assembly.

In Sucre, the opposition demanded that the new constitution move the executive and congressional branches of government from La Paz to Sucre, which used to be the center of government until the late 19th century. This was clearly a spoiler strategy that plays heavily to racist sentiments – as La Paz and its nearby sister city of El Alto are at the heart of the country’s majority Indian population that supports Morales and mobilized in 2003 to topple a “k’aras” president in La Paz who murdered Indian demonstrators in the streets.

When the Assembly passed a draft of the new constitution last weekend, the opposition violently took over the streets and all the major public buildings in Sucre using dynamite and Molotov cocktails, demanding the resignation of “the shitty Indian Morales.” Parts of the city were in flames as the Assembly members fled, followed by the police a day later, who had been ordered not to use live ammunition against the mobs.

The right wing and the business organizations in Santa Cruz and allied cities are threatening to declare autonomy and even talking of secession. A special assembly convoked by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee declared that it would only recognize Sucre as the “location of all the powers of the state.” Branko Marinkovic, a major business magnate and the head of the Santa Cruz committee, declares, “The fight has begun for our autonomy and liberty…. ” Along with Santa Cruz, civic committees in five other major departmental capitals are calling for an economic boycott to withhold basic consumer commodities from the market and sow economic chaos. A move is afoot by the Civic Committees to “declare de facto autonomy” on December 14.

A massive mobilization of the Indian population in La Paz and the western highlands is taking place in support of Morales and the new constitution. Even in the eastern departments where the opposition controls the major cities, rural indigenous organizations are on the move, including in the department of Santa Cruz. The leader of Bolivia’s largest peasant workers confederation, Isaác Ávalos, is calling for a blockade of the cities, declaring, “we will seize their lands …if they impose de facto autonomy.”

“We are at a national impasse,” says Miguel Urisote, a political analyst and director of the Land Foundation, an independent research center in La Paz. “The right wing led by the Santa Cruz oligarchy is in open rebellion, but Morales, the Movement Towards Socialism and the popular movements will not back down. The military is supporting the president.

The radical upsurges in Venezuela and Bolivia have very different roots. In Venezuela, where over 80 percent of the population lives in the cities, it is primarily an urban upheaval that predates the rise of Hugo Chavez. In 1989, the “Caracazo” threw the existing political order into crisis when tens of thousands of people from the outlying slums of Caracas descended on the center of the city where the rich lived. The social and economic transformations of the past eight years under the presidency of Chavez have been carried out in tandem with the popular classes. The main battle has centered over the control and distribution of oil revenues, while in Bolivia the struggle over land and the right of the Indians to grow coca plants are major areas of conflict.

While a close rapport exists between Chavez and Morales, the transformations in each country will assume distinct trajectories. They are part of the broader process of social change occurring at different paces and intensities throughout Latin America as the old models of the 20th century and the historic dominance of the United States are disputed.

Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

Venezuelan and Bolivian Revolutions in Danger, U.S. Hands Off!

2007-12-09T19:33:39Z

[Note: The following articles are reprinted from the November-December 2007 issue of The Organizer newspaper and are in agreement with Liberation News on these subjects. To order a sample hard copy of the Organizer, contact the phone numbers or email/snail-mail addresses listed below. To subscribe to Liberation News for free on-line, click on the link given, and follow the directions at the site.]

The Organizer Newspaper
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140.
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 824-1072.
email: <theorganizer@earthlink.net>

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

---

Venezuela - The "No" Wins the
Referendum on Constitutional Reform:
The Venezuelan Revolution Is in Danger

EDITORIAL

In the referendum that was held December 2 in Venezuela, called by President Hugo Chavez with the aim of reforming the Constitution, a majority went to the "No" advocated by the U.S. Embassy-supported opponents of Chavez.

There were 4,379,302 voters for the "Yes" and 4,504,354 for the "No" -- a difference of 124,962 votes. The abstention rate of 44.11% was much higher than the 25.3% for the presidential elections of December 2006, when Chavez won with 63% of the vote.

The reforms involved 33 articles of the Constitution and included such questions as the right of the president to seek re-election, the place and role of communal institutions, and the unity of the national territory.

Article 320 of the Constitutional Reform called for expanding the role of the State "for reasons of sovereignty, development and national interest -- to exploit the nation's oil and gas resources and to produce and control all services and goods of public interest and strategic character ... and to promote national manufacturing, making use of the raw materials derived from the exploitation of the country's natural resources."

Other articles called for reclaiming sovereignty over Venezuela's Central Bank, which till now has been under the control of the International Monetary Fund.

U.S. Campaign Against Venezuelan Revolution

For years, the U.S. government has waged a campaign aimed at removing the Chavez government from power. This campaign was stepped up many notches these past months. The U.S. government, the multinationals based in Caracas, the international media, and the majority of the private media in Venezuela (themselves controlled by foreign capital), all pursued an unprecedented smear campaign against the Chavez government, accusing Chavez of being a dictator who had planned to win the referendum by fraud.

There was a continuous and ever-louder threat of civil war had the "Yes" vote carried the day. This was not an idle threat. In Bolivia, the right-wing forces, backed by the U.S. Embassy, had risen up only 10 days before the Venezuelan referendum to deny Evo Morales's government the right to nationalize the nation's oil and gas reserves and to ensure that the Constituent Assembly could function by majority vote. The Bolivian oligarchy, at the behest of the U.S. government and oil transnational corporations, is staging daily riots to promote the secession of four oil-rich departments from Bolivia.

The attacks against the Constitutional Reform process in Venezuela are the continuation of an uninterrupted campaign waged by these right-wing forces against Hugo Chavez ever since he took office -- a campaign that includes two attempted coup d'etats (which were defeated by the mass mobilizations of the Venezuelan people), two lockouts imposed by the powerful bosses' federation (Fedecamaras), and an attempt to remove Chavez from office via a binding referendum in August 2005 (an attempt that also was defeated by the uprising of the people).

This heinous propaganda campaign was contradicted by the manner in which this referendum was carried out -- with full transparency of results and total freedom of expression and agitation. One should note that the same people who are screaming "dictator" in Venezuela recognized the legitimacy of Felipe Calderón in Mexico, the usurper who was "elected" only because of massive fraud.

It also should be noted that none of the presidents who joined the chorus to lambaste Chavez as a "dictator" -- beginning with George W. Bush -- have ever done what Chavez just did; that is, submit major policy decisions to a vote by the people. Did the American people ever get to vote on NAFTA or on the war in Iraq in a popular referendum?

But the offensive launched to destabilize the government was not only limited to propaganda. U.S. imperialism, particularly through the Colombian government, the principal exporter of many food staples to Venezuela, organized a boycott on the shipment of these basic staples to Venezuela -- a campaign not unlike the one deployed by the CIA to prepare the coup d'etat against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.

Why Have They Gone After Chavez?

The Constitution of 1999, defended today by those who rejected it at the time, establishes the public character of PDVSA, the big national oil company and the backbone of the nation. Chavez went further: he required oil multinationals to be part of mixed-investment companies where PDVSA holds a majority. And moreover, the Chavez government has used a large part of oil revenues for social spending: education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.

According to a recent report issued by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), "Poverty in Venezuela has fallen by 31% over the course of the nine years of Chavez's government, and 'certain people still wonder why Chavez remains popular', an ECLAC official noted ironically." (Le Monde, December 2, 2007)

It's a fact: Poverty has dropped in Venezuela -- contrary to Brazil under the Lula government, which has followed IMF directives to the letter; contrary to Mexico under the fraudster Calderon, faithful ally of Bush; and even contrary to the countries of the European Union, where the number of poor people continues to rise as a result of the implementation of the "zero deficit" policy of the Maastricht Treaty.

For imperialism and all its defenders, it is intolerable that a government dares to nationalize, or re-nationalize, and invests billions of dollars toward meeting the needs of its population, to the detriment of financial markets and speculators. This is intolerable, and therefore everything must be done to stop it.

New Pressures to Derail the Revolution

Without a doubt, the "victory" of the opposition is going to be exploited to try to call into question all aspects of the revolution in progress in Venezuela, particularly the nationalization of oil, the measures on agrarian reform, and the re-nationalization of companies previously privatized in such sectors as iron and steel, as well as the larger freedoms at all levels won by the Venezuelan people.

Imperialism will now seek to derail the revolution by "legal" means, promoting "dialogue" and "reconciliation" and demanding the inclusion of opposition sectors within the government, thereby paving the way for Chavez's own defeat down the road. This does not, of course, preclude another coup attempt. U.S. imperialism cannot tolerate, and will not tolerate, a government that nationalizes oil, other natural resources, and abandoned factories, and that adopts measures of land reform, as Chavez has done.

In this framework, the integration of Venezuela into Mercosur, a measure promoted by Lula in Brazil, is aimed at "stabilizing" the situation in Venezuela -- meaning rolling back the revolutionary process and preventing it from moving forward toward socialism.

"The Opposition Did Not Win the Referendum, We Lost It" -- Chavez

Following the defeat of the "Yes" vote, Hugo Chavez explained on Venezuelan TV that the opposition did not win the referendum, it was the Bolivarian camp that lost the election.

Chavez pointed out that the opposition barely increased its vote totals -- a scant 150,000 votes -- from the 2006 presidential election. What made the difference was the abstention of about 2.9 million people who had voted for Chavez in 2006 but who refrained from voting in this referendum.

How to explain this abstention?

Chavez is correct when he notes that this referendum vote was held at gunpoint -- with the U.S. Embassy, the Spanish king and their puppets holding the gun at the Venezuelan people and threatening to shoot if the "Yes" had won. Clearly, the threat of civil war was a major factor. No one can doubt this for one minute. But is this all?

Unlike 2004, there was no visible mass enthusiasm in the streets during this referendum. A more somber mood seemed to prevail at the time of the vote. A discussion will be needed among revolutionists in Venezuela to address some of the following concerns expressed by workers before and after the referendum:

- The role of various governors, mayors and ministers linked to Chavismo, who have opposed independent struggles by the workers and peasants, who have been accused of corruption -- and many of whom did not even mobilize their base for the "Yes" vote.

- The Bolivarian government's push to create a single party linked to the State. (The government has announced that the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela -- PSUV -- has more than 5 million members, yet the vote for the "Yes" on the referendum was just 4.38 million.)

- The attempts by the government to question the autonomy and independence of the trade unions.

- The decision to link Chavez's own continued tenure in office to the more fundamental reforms of the country's economic and financial institutions.

Addressing these issues, among others, openly -- and seeking collectively to forge the institutions of workers' and popular democracy -- will only strengthen the revolutionary process from within and enable it to more firmly withstand the pressures and attacks from imperialism, which are bound to increase.

One thing is certain, however. The Venezuelan Revolution is at a turning point.

Either it moves forward, reclaiming under democratic control all that was privatized, advancing to take control over key sectors of the economy that continue in private hands (banks, large corporations); or else it will move backward toward a pact with the local oligarchies, agents of imperialism, which will lead inexorably to the weakening of the Chavez government among its mass base, preparing the conditions for its removal from power.

In this struggle, we who live in the belly of the beast are unconditionally on the side of the Venezuelan people in defense of their conquests, and on the side of the government elected by the people, against any and every attempt by U.S. imperialism and its allies to undermine their sovereignty.

U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!

-- The Editors

***********************

Bolivia After the Constituent Assembly Vote:
U.S. & Oligarchy Step Up Separatist Offensive

Introductory note:

Following is the English translation of the statement issued Nov. 25, 2007 in Bolivia by La Chispa, the Bolivian sympathizing section of the Fourth International, regarding the recent developments in that country.

We want to remind you once again of the Bolivia Solidarity Fund that we have launched in the United States to help sustain -- and expand -- the activity of La Chispa in these decisive moments. Any donation, big or small, to this fund will go a long, long way.

You can donate through Paypal by clicking on the link below or you can send a check made payable to The Organizer (please specify Bolivia Fund at bottom of check) to:

P.O. Box 40009
San Francisco, CA, 94140

For more information or to donate online, visit:
http://www.revolution-youth.org/bolivia.php

Thanks in advance for your solidarity,
Eric Blanc
for Revolution Youth (USA) and Socialist Organizer

************************************

Declaration of La Chispa, the Bolivian sympathizing section of the Fourth International

(November 25, 2007)

- Now is the moment! All out against the separatist oligarchy!

- Unity of the workers, peasants, youth and their organizations in defense of the unity of Bolivia and the October Agenda!

Brothers and Sisters:

Bolivia is living through a crucial moment in its history.

The oligarchies, agents of imperialism, after having provoked the conflicts in Sucre by manipulating the theme of the transfer of the capital (from Sucre to La Paz), have now announced their decision to organize "civil disobedience" and not recognize the decisions taken by the majority of members of the Constituent Assembly (147 out of 255, that is, 57%) at the session on November 24 at the Military Academy in Sucre.

In the words of Costas, the mayor of Santa Cruz, they have decided to accelerate the implementation of their autonomous status -- in other words, they have decided to attempt to split Bolivia in order to maintain their privileges as the lackeys of imperialism.

The moment demands the widest unity of all sectors of the people to confront our common our enemy: the right wing and, behind this, imperialism. Our enemies aim to crush our advance toward the implementation of the Agenda of October (2003) and May-June (2005) -- that is, full nationalization of the natural resources, a Sovereign Constituent Assembly, agrarian reform, etc.

Our enemies aim to put an end to the revolutionary process of the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed in Bolivia -- as manifested in the uprisings of 2003 and 2005. They aim to bring us to civil war to carve up the nation!

The workers, the peasants, the youth, the native peoples of all departments and regions of the country want a united and sovereign Bolivia!

In the face of the separatist, pro-imperialist reaction, we must all join together to fight back!

The Bolivian Workers Federation (COB), the backbone organization of the working class, has the responsibility to call on all those who raise the banner of the Agenda of October, the government itself, the MAS, and all the organizations of the people, neighbors, peasants, native peoples, to jointly form a UNITED FRONT IN DEFENSE OF THE UNITY OF THE NATION AND THE OCTOBER AGENDA.

IT IS URGENT THAT A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY BE CALLED, with representatives of all the workers' and people's organizations, with elected representatives of all the sectors, the mines, the factories, the countryside, the universities, to take the necessary defense measures against the offensive of the pro-imperialist right-wing oligarchy!

The lessons must be learned from recent events!

The oligarchy, through its political parties (PODEMOS; UN) and its civic committees, have blackmailed the government elected by the Bolivian people and organized the referendum on autonomies in 2006 -- which was rejected through the victory of the NO. These same forces have sabotaged the Constituent Assembly through pushing for the rule of two-thirds voting, forcing the MAS and the representatives to accept their demands.

Now these forces, through their spokespersons -- Tuto Quiroga, Manfred Reyes Villa, Marincovick, etc. -- say that Evo Morales wants to impose a fascist dictatorship!

Making agreements with these people, like the MAS has been doing, only served to strengthen its separatist drive, which aims to hand over part of our Bolivia to imperialism.

The Constituent Assembly must continue to meet and must take decisions by absolute majority, which is a basic rule of democracy!

In order for the people to mobilize today against the attacks of the right wing, a Sovereign Constituent Assembly must adopt concrete measures that correspond to the Agenda of October:

- 100% nationalization of the oil, gas, and mines!
- Elimination of the latifundios. Land to the peasants and native peoples!
- No to autonomies! Respect the majority decision of the people in the July 2, 2006 referendum.
- Immediately abrogate all the conservative laws such as 21060 and renationalize the privatized companies!

But, we insist, that there is no task more urgent than UNITING ALL THE FORCES OF THE WORKERS, PEOPLE, NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS, YOUTH ORRGANIZATIONS, AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES to smash the offensive to divide and destroy Bolivia.

We repeat: The Bolivian Workers Federation (COB) has the responsibility to be at the side of our peasants and indigenous peoples -- regardless of the political differences that exist with Evo Morales' MAS party. It is a burning need to forge this front, with all sectors of the people -- though the COB must maintain its political independence.

It is in this process that the Political Instrument of the Workers (a party which has been approved on paper time and time again by the congresses of the COB, the CODs, the CORs) can be built. This would be a party that represents the working class and its allies. But to reach this point, the broadest UNITED FRONT against the oligarchies and imperialism must be built today.

Brothers and Sisters:

What is happening in Bolivia has a direct relation to the struggle of the peoples of the world, particularly in Latin America, where the majority is resisting the policies of the destruction of nations pushed by U.S. imperialism!

Today, imperialism and its allies aim to isolate and defeat the revolutions under way in Venezuela and Ecuador and the workers' struggles in Peru, Brazil, Mexico and inside the United States itself.

Defeating the offensive of the oligarchy is not only the condition for continuing the struggle for the Agenda of October; it is also the condition for continuing the upward movement in the struggle of our peoples throughout the continent and the world!

The time is now!

- Unite against the oligarchy and imperialism!

- Faced with the Civil Disobedience of the Oligarchy, the Mobilization of the whole Bolivian people is needed!

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

PRESS STATEMENT: Revised 12.06.2007, Black File 7001, Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness.

2007-12-06T14:49:33Z

PRESS STATEMENT: Revised 12.06.2007, Black File 7001, Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness.

Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness. “Black File 7001” is a work of investigative journalism that initially began in 1994. Early in 1999, I completed a covert assignment with the FBI lasting five years after having been previously requested to stand-down from a fulltime university curriculum with an inactive law enforcement background for possibly twelve months. Immediately thereafter I entered the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec) and ever since have continued to experience the U.S. government’s use of psychological torture practices and political retribution by the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration. Multiple actionable offenses have been committed under state, federal and international law while the culpable agents and agencies remain shielded from civil and criminal prosecution by the administration’s threat or issuance of national security letters, which prevent legal discovery and subvert the rule of law. The U.S. government does torture, I am one of its American victims and am requesting a humanitarian intervention before it is too late.

EDITORIAL FOREWORD:

Producing the report titled “Black File 7001” has experienced the threat or issuance of national security letters by the Bush-Cheney administration, a subordinate agent directly under the administration threatening me with the invention of a criminal charge if I publish and the suppression of this story by the same Democratic Congress that falsely promised an end to the money laundering operation in Iraq that remains perpetuated by the insidious genocide of our American military service members and other innocent human beings throughout the world.

As a former lifelong humanitarian member of what use to be the Republican Party until 2000 and a person who also voted for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, I charge the neoconservatives with having filled the bowels of this Trojan Horse Republican Party with the stench of operating a continuing criminal enterprise under the guise of bringing democracy to the world.

The U.S. government infrastructure has been overthrown and this administration has declared constitutional civil war against the United States of America. The American people must organize in a lawful and peaceful revolution that mirrors and surpasses the civil rights era. We must march on Washington, D.C. and picket the corporate offices of the propaganda ministries to force their coverage of your protests and displayed messages.

It is critically important that before the next election we must demand Democratic Congressional members to openly support publically funded elections; not for profit universal healthcare; free or affordable higher education for all citizens; the meaningful development alternative fuel sources; the abatement of the conditions causing the honey bee populations from disappearing from around the world (later in the primary story I will invite you to read why noticing the smallest of G-d’s creatures holds the largest messages); and the criminal investigation of the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration regarding the Black File 7001 report.

Career politicians, regardless of political affiliations who fail the muster of the American people should be removed and replaced with genuine representatives before the next voting cycle.

Americans must become the partisans of liberty to reclaim the dream and promise of America and our inalienable rights as human beings. The jackbooted fascists of today must be prevented from emulating the treason of U.S. Senator Prescott Bush through their perversion of peace for the profits of war. The American mainstream has already been herded towards the invisible and tangible death camps of democracy. In those places you will endured conditions far worse than any physical torture where other Americans like me have been left for dead for over thirty years. These human beings of whom I speak are not criminals or terrorists; they are honorable American citizens who answered their country’s call to duty for special covert government service only to become a disposable population and the hidden dirty secret of the U.S. government.

Since 1970, one thousand and eighty (1,080) American citizens have existed as something cousin to death camp victims from the destructive effects of the Federal Witness Protection Program. These non-criminal federal witnesses and American veterans of voluntary covert government service became the unknowing test subjects in a clandestine torture experiment that exists as the precursor model for converting a freethinking U.S. civilian population into a self-consuming enslaved society. Within the death camp known as “WitSec” these human beings are subjected to the insidious methods of psychological torture that systematically erode the individual sense of self-identity until the will to live has been lost.

ABOUT ME:

My WitSec No. is 7001, I am a husband, father, writer, and freelance journalist who remained inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness and am now ready to surface under guarded conditions with the firsthand story of how a minority group of honorable American citizens are being psychologically tortured and politically persecuted by the U.S. government. Immediately I am seeking the support of the American public and progressive news media; the representation of a listed creative agent; contract negotiations with book publishers and the motion picture industry; a university initiative with an accredited school of journalism to include lecturing options and the sanitized conversion of my college records; and communication platforms with Ms. Oprah Winfrey and Mr. George Clooney via the Smoke House Studio.

By comparison to the physical injuries that I have endured from trauma and other accidents, the lasting effects of psychological torture are far worse. This form of torture is sourced from the fascist mindset of the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration through their commissions of actionable offenses and political retributions. As a veteran of voluntary covert government service who operated undercover for five years while contracted by the FBI as an agent of the federal government, I state unequivocally and categorically that the U.S. government does torture human beings. As an American citizen and non-criminal federal witness let the record show that I am declaring myself as a torture victim of the U.S. government. With my soul dying and the body giving signs that it wants to follow I offer that no truer words have ever been written than “give me liberty or give me death” or that “the worse death is a life without hope.”

Having previously been blessed with an out of body experience during trauma that was caused by the U.S. government and prior to my recovery in advance of relearning how to walk, I am not frightened by a natural death. The experience of dying for me confirmed the Socratic belief that the human soul is made of two parts with one half being a physical finite and the other a non-physical infinite. Life as seen from the eyes of the body is an illusion or one half of a duality. It was possible to see from two separate and paralleling perspectives at the same time. The physical world appeared normal while my body felt the tremendous force of being pulled into the earth. Initially from within the spiritual realm there was no ugliness, no beauty, no gender, and only muted colors with humanoid forms. Before I lost the sight of my physical body, the last human emotion that I felt was an all encompassing global pity that literally enveloped the earth with my living sentient energy. Soon I was sitting in space and the beauty of the earth returned with the comforting tenderness of a loving mother and at my back was the warmth of wisdom and strength from a fatherly sun. A few moments passed and my two halves were made whole again to continue the journey that brought me to this place of inhuman suffering.

In self-definition I am a Humanitarian-Universal-Infrastructuralist or a person who has spent a lifetime identifying and interrelating the commonalities between myself and all known sentient beings and other components within the universe from which to become more human.

My views of the current U.S. President and Vice President find them culpable for treason, egregious crimes against humanity and international terrorism while wearing a mask of insipid divinity. Clearly these judicially selected ten cent millionaires are criminal sociopaths who function from a series of learned behaviors used to produce a desired result while being incapable of recognizing any genuine sense of right and wrong.

These individuals and their followers bare the marks that brand their names with the gamatria of the most inhuman and deceptive beings that walk among us on the earth in legion with what some would call the antichrist. Although I have never considered myself worthy of the blessings, respectfully I believe that throughout my life there have been a number of occasions when my being was touched by the many faces of G-d. With all of that said, one should never confuse spiritual currency with political capitol since the latter is most often sourced from the abyss of false profits, which brought the genocide over six million Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals in Nazi Germany; the slaughter of tribal nations in America; the turning of human beings against their brothers and sisters throughout history; the selling of children, women and men as slaves; the gang rape and victimization of Arabic women who are then whipped as criminals; and the 911 terrorist attacks used to perpetuate war profiteering and oil piracy for those who drink from a rivers of human blood and suffering. Considering my temporary acquaintance with death, I believe the purest form of spiritual worship that collectively joins us with the universe is simply the individual act of at least attempting to recognize the human being in all people.

BLACK FILE 7001:

“Black File 7001” is a work of investigative journalism that began in 1994 as an academic prospectus with the goals of publishing books, producing movies, film documentaries, and developing a lecture syllabus with the thinking who better to teach than a person with skin in the game. While in a fulltime academic setting and shortly after beginning this protect, I discovered actionable intelligence that was brought forward for case installation at the federal level. Already possessing an inactive law enforcement background and specialized skill sets where few if any training manuals exist, the FBI requested my voluntary assistance for a projected twelve months. Five years later I completed the FBI undercover group one investigation having successfully penetrated four organized crime groups while never being afforded one day off for that entire period of time. Since other federal law enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle long duration personal security operations, I entered the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec) as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness in 1999. Nearly immediately after entering the WitSec the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration unthinkably began outing my active covert status. Since exiting the WitSec in good standing early in 2001, political retributions by the U.S. government have continued to terrorize me with actionable offenses and the tactics of psychological torture. These culpable acts additionally serve as a passive sanction for the assassination of an American citizen and a former covert agent of the federal government. This story is uncharted territory and I am unaware of any other writer/journalist who has actually penetrated this fraudulent clandestine federal program, which shrouds itself beneath an undeserved veil of secrecy that exists in the absence of public scrutiny and meaningful congressional oversight. The latter might explain why multiple action notices regarding this investigation have gone unanswered by the craven Democratic Congress that I helped elected to office with their false promise of ending the corporatist money laundering operation in Iraq.

Within the next 30 day or by New Year’s Day 2008, I will publish an extensive sanitized report that has been redacted from a much larger work. Please communicate with me and contact your local election campaign committees to demand that your congressional members take action in this matter.

American citizens are being used as the unknowing test subjects in a clandestine torture experiment shrouded within the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec). Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses (1,080) are a special minority class of American citizens in title only who are being used as a laboratory control sample for the applied tactics of terrorism and psychological torture (psyops) on a U.S. civilian population by the U.S. government.

Writing remains one of my two fragile anchors holding me to this world and a federal agent (L.H.M.) directly under the Bush-Cheney administration has telephonically communicated “you have a lot of people in high places afraid to death that you are going to destroy their programs…and if you publish a book, the government will invent a criminal charge against you.” After refusing not to publish with an invitation to that federal agent’s handlers to “go pound salt up their asses”, a series of actionable offenses were committed against me in political retribution under state, federal and international law. These same entities on several occasions have outed my classified status that with each culpable act, serves to intensify what has become a standing passive sanction for the assassination of an American citizen and former covert agent of the federal government.

As a physically disabled person from two trauma accidents caused by the federal government or incurred in the line of duty during covert government service, I applied for Social Security Disability Benefits (SSDB) through the required classified channels. This process required that I utilize my second WitSec Inspector (A.S.) and the Social Security Administration’s Sensitive Operations Division (SOD) that was established for persons in covert-ops, the CIA and the U.S. State Department working oversees. The Social Security Disability Benefits were authorized, but following my refusal not to publish the WitSec and SSA’s SOD conspired to punitively withdraw my SSDB. This occurred prior to beginning treatments for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer in 2004. The government’s own federal court judge who heard the SSA case issued several letters of complaint to the Sensitive Operations Division, charging that office had provided the court with erroneous information and that the SOD’s delay in responding was contemptuous to the point of preventing a fair hearing. Two months past while the SOD and WitSec crafted their evidence and my SSDB’s claim entered the appeals stage. During the initial SSDB process, repeated telephonic conversations had been made with and between the WitSec and the SOD to insure that the production of the SSA documents would not out my covert status. After multiple assurances that complete security would be maintained, the WitSec and SOD deliberately or at the least through total gross incompetence filed documents that outed my covert status by commingling my identities in violation of several federal laws and a federal court seal. After the matter was sent to the SSA Hearing and Appeals Board where it remained for two years that federal agency notified my private attorney they had lost my classified government file in violation of the same laws allegedly protecting my covert status. A copy was returned by my attorney and two weeks later my benefits were denied again. The SSDB matter is pending on civil appeal to the federal court where I am certain it will be again denied by the government’s crafting of the evidence. Lastly the WitSec and SOD conspired to deconstruct my only viable work history by purging a covert front business located in Texas from the regular SSA computer system and additionally failed under contract to sanitize and convert my previous Social Security records into my new Jewish name. Allegedly I had been employed by that Texas front business for over a decade as a construction estimator that for all I knew might have found Dick Cheney answering the telephones on an earlier occasion. Following the WitSec and SOD’s punitive acts of political retribution, during two subsequent visits to the local SSA office the computer screen was so void of information that the office staffers contacted their supervisors to report they believed their computer system had been penetrated by hackers.

Prior to 911 and before the USDOJ had been prostituted by this corrupt administration, I was able to assist in the covert criminal prosecution of my first U.S. Deputy Marshal/WitSec Inspector (J.D.) for his theft of government funds.

After 911 and following my refusal not to publish under threat of the invention of a criminal charge by the U.S. government that same former WitSec Inspector/federal felon was released from prison and allowed to stalk me. While near death from chemotherapy and radiation treatments for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer that same federal felon physically accosted me by the arm inside of a warehouse superstore. Thirty-six security notices went unanswered by the U.S. Marshals Service’s Federal Witness Security Program Headquarters.

The second WitSec Inspector (A.S.) eventually came to my home with a regular deputy marshal who did not have a WitSec security clearance, which further outed my covert status and sarcastically laughed that he had forgotten to tell me that the WitSec Headquarters’ mailing address had been changed after 911 and that under the new U.S. Patriot Act my only means of communicating with headquarters was directly through him. That WitSec Inspector continued to smile while stating that my classified information and security notices had been circulated by several staffers without WitSec clearances before it got to where I thought it was being sent. When asked about the other Deputy Marshal’s security clearance, the WitSec Inspector stated “owe I use non-WitSec personnel all the time to handle WitSec matters.” This same WitSec Inspector has committed multiple actionable offences and has outed my covert status numerous times while creating a growing mortal threat environment around my geographic location.

Many of the public self-aggrandizing claims and testimonials given before the U.S. Congress and published by the Federal Witness Protection Program will soon be debunked within my Black File 7001 report.

Following the WitSec and SOD’s removal of my work history with their deletion of the covert front business from the SSA computer system and even though I am a very capable and multitalented individual with strong skill sets, given this act and the government’s failure to perform under written contracts, I have been unable to find employment after submitting over 3000 job applications. However by comparison and in direct contrast to my own personal situation, the first WitSec Inspector (J.D.) after his release from federal prison for the theft of several thousand dollars in U.S. government funds is now gainfully employed and processing the private financial records of American citizens as a mortgage loan officer. Under this administration criminals and traitors are rewarded and the good servants of the American people become part of a disposable population.

Out of 18,000 federal witnesses, 16,920 are criminal and custodial federal witnesses and 1,080 of that total number are “non-criminal federal witnesses.” The six percent who are non-criminal federal witnesses are comprised of honorable American citizens from every cultural identity within our society. These same veterans of voluntary covert government service took that extra step above and beyond the call of duty to participate in our system while defending our constitutional democracy and the American people. Within that minority of six percent I am an even smaller number of non-criminal federal witnesses who entered covert government service with an inactive law enforcement background and specialized skill sets of a nature that possess few if any training manuals.

The ACLU of which I am a member has tried to bring four previous cases involving non-criminal federal witnesses through the Washington, D.C. office. With each lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Bush-Cheney administration has issued national security letters to prevent the legal discovery of evidence and thus subverted the rule of law. However, in my possession is the actual physical evidence that includes but is not limited to federal court documents proving the outing of my covert status; the federal court documents of the first WitSec Inspector (J.D.); lawfully produced audiotape recordings of WitSec personnel and others; and the proof of warrantless wiretapping, data mining, the electronic theft of intellectual property; et al. One should remember General Douglas MacArthur’s island hopping campaign during WWII. As that relates to this matter, I am bypassing a slugfest with Goliath that would only serve to hold me in stasis with my foot in the courtroom door. Instead I invite all freethinking human beings to a Greek debate in the court of public opinion. Criticism and contemplation are necessary to keep a flourishing democracy alive. Let the U.S. government bring forth its best criminal cowards to stand on the square with me in open examination before the American people and the world.

THE TREASON OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

It is also my intention to challenge the blatant lies told before the U.S. Congress by Condoleezza Rice regarding the administration’s knowledge of events prior to 911 – the FBI and CIA did have operational joint counterterrorism taskforce offices since the mid 90s.

“A litany of lies about 911, Iraq and now Iran – There is one point that I am compelled to insert within this document beyond the scope of its primary focus and here seems as good a place as anywhere. A covert FBI Special Agent and former teammate in charge of two special operations groups who worked in the field with me and whom I supported in the hunt for Eric Robert Rudolph also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, revealed during the mid 90s that both the FBI and CIA had established joint counterterrorism taskforce offices to exchange foreign and domestic intelligence. This fact directly contradicts Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before congress regarding the August 6, 2001 PDB Briefing Report titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”, during which Rice stated that a fractionalization existed between federal agencies, which prevented intelligence information from being communicated to the Bush administration. The most blatant lie came when Rice stated that no joint FBI/CIA taskforce offices existed before or during that time, while alleging joint taskforce offices were being established forthwith. Further supporting a charge of perjury against Condoleezza Rice and I believe grounds for treason, appears to be former CIA Director, George Tenet’s public testimony regarding actionable intelligence in July 2001 regarding Osama bin Laden’s plan to attack American targets using commercial jetliners. July 2001 marked the last time that I flew on a commercial aircraft on my way to lecture at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia and an occasion when I exchanged passing remarks with former U.S. Senator Gary Hart sitting near me. The actionable intelligence was clearly suppressed by the Bush-Cheney administration. In other words, given these facts and the known associations between the 911 Terrorists; the family of Osama bin Laden; the Saudi Arabian Royal family; the United Arab Emirates (poised to purchase 25% of Citibank and 40% of the U.S. and British Stock Markets); and the oil trading partners, personal friends and business associates within the Bush-Cheney syndicate it appears that the United States of America was allowed to be attacked by a foreign enemy to act as a protagonist event for the perpetuation of war profiteering and oil piracy. Therefore I strongly believe that if the unveiled enemies of the American people were not politically shielded, they would have already been prosecuted for treason, conspiracy, racketeering, money laundering, operating a continuing criminal enterprise, international terrorism, and crimes against humanity.”

SPECIAL NOTE CONCERNING IRAN:

Before the 2006 election the U.S. Intelligence agencies already knew that Iran did not have a “secret nuclear weapons program.” That report was presented to the Bush-Cheney administration and was politically suppressed with instructions given between the lines to craft new evidence. The facts are that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has not been able to achieve a greater rate than 3.8% enrichment, which is even a lower percentage than what is required to bring a peaceful nuclear power plant online and far less than the enrichment level needed to produce a nuclear weapon. The psychology of substituting sexuality for the creation of illegal wars with oil rich sovereign nations, seems the iconic aphrodisiac of this administration when laminating that over sixty-eight elected Republican politicians have been charged and convicted of sexual crimes against children; that George W. Bush, a known cocaine user (sexual stimulant), deserted his post in the Air Nation Guard when they began drug testing; that both Bush and Cheney took multiple deferments from military service during Vietnam so that other Americans could die in their places; that Dick Cheney made use of a Freudian phallic extension in the form of a shotgun to shot his friend in the head during a hunting expedition; that Dick Cheney has a pneumatic penile implant to achieve an erection; and that the nude photograph of George W. Bush in college displays an unremarkable penis. Add these factors together with the absolute power over the U.S. military and the world will recognize a six headed monster with twelve hearts that numbers 666 and produces the political fodder that destroys the sovereign thought process, creates a toxic society and consumes the collective human soul. Plainly stated devil cannot exist without followers.

MY REQUEST TO MEDIA, UNIVERSITIES, PUBLISHERS, MOVIE PRODUCERS, AND THE WORLD OF HUMAN BEINGS:

While my reaching out might become the closing scene in a lifelong journey to become more human, knowingly I choose my own death over remaining a torture victim and slave within an uncultivatable existence where self-nurturing and remaining true to one’s own nature is an impossibility. The Democratic Congressional members that I helped elect have remained silent with the full knowledge of this matter and only a handful of good human beings seem to be listening for the moment. Already a subordinate federal agent directly under the Bush-Cheney administration has telephonically threatened that if I publish a book the government will invent a criminal charge against me. This is not the America that I defended and have nourished. Nevertheless if we are to remain a world of human beings, we the people must publically exam the U.S. government’s ongoing psychological torture of up to 1,080 Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses who are American citizens and your good neighbors. Currently I have established online locations on YouTube, Tribe.net, Comcast, and have posted on the message board at The Ed Schultz Show website where these American citizens can share their stories with other human beings and possibly begin to reclaim their individual sense of self-identity through these communication platforms. One non-criminal federal witness has already communicated they are hiding outside the U.S. to protect themselves from U.S. government torture. Recently I attempted to communicate with a well known actor’s movie studio and was informed that I must have a listed creative agent to represent my story before they will be legally able to communicate with me. Therefore and in as much that I would dare to hope to restore my own life back to the place where it should have already been, I am seeking the representation of a listed Creative Agent, Business Negotiations with members from the Publishing and Motion Picture Industries, and a University Initiative from an accredited School of Journalism where I might combine all of these components within a flourishing academic setting to create a lecture syllabus and continue writing. Please do not think me a selfish person, because I have remained one of the most extroverted and giving human beings you could ever know. This academic and professional prospectus has endured as my long-range plan since beginning this journalism project and is one of the few reasons why I have not ended my own life after experiencing something cousin to an extraordinary rendition to a clandestine blacksite torture facility that exists invisibly within the plain-sight of American society. Please do not let this story die with me and challenge the validity of any member of the Democratic Congress for their repeated failures to respond to several action notices regarding this matter.

Beyond the above I wish to offer one final piece of personal information. When I relocated to this area I had no intention of becoming involved with anyone and had anticipated reclaiming my academic standing to achieve my goals in life. While visiting a local bookstore and coffee house, I met the finest human being whom I have ever known and today that person is my wife. Together we raised our young child from her previous marriage and I have been blessed by the experience of being a father. Had it not been for my wife’s medical insurance I would not be here today writing this story. My wife retires at the end of this year and our child is now attending a university. What that means for me living on a fixed monthly annuity income and having been waited out by the WitSec while my saving depleted is that I will not be able to afford the additional $600.00 a month for my portion of the medical insurance policy. Further I have been unable to move in any direction to build the life that I wanted from the resulting harms caused by the WitSec cocoon that I will address in detail within the redacted report that follows. To protect my family and legally separate myself from my wife in the event of recurring illness, I am preparing to file the divorce papers on my desk. Never will I forgive or forget that the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration has systematically deconstructed my family and prevented my equality as a person and an American citizen while psychologically torturing me in ways that have already killed other Americans who are non-criminal federal witnesses through suicide and medical neglect. This deconstruction of my family unit is comparatively symbolic to the overthrow of the U.S. government infrastructure by the international crime consortium and the same coconspiratorial war profiteers who attacked the United States of America on September 11, 2001. Having lived so long as the shell of an American citizen in title only, if I am unable to be made whole again in America, then as a torture victim and dissident under political persecution I am prepared to request asylum from the government of Canada. Should that fail and if I cannot be restored then I am ready to leave this world for the peace of oblivion and wish each of you mozel tov.

THE QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED BY A GROWING NUMBER OF HUMAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP YOU?

First please do not attempt to send any money I believe that it is possible to earn a living with the years invested in this story and I prefer paying my own way, which has remained the purpose of my labors while enduring U.S. government torture. Profoundly from a place of extreme isolation your concerns are priceless gifts that have touched me deeper than words could possibly express and I truly feel your human warmth and compassion.

Beyond that human inclusion the most important act of support is not to let this story die from a lack of response or another empty promise by the congress just so this matter will be “disappeared” like the 1,080 American patriots who are non-criminal federal witnesses in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Please meditate for the good energy of the universe to encompass the lives of all human beings and continue to contact any person or organization who will if nothing else at least feel the truth of this torture story: Democratic Party headquarters around the nation; elected representatives who truly wish to remain in office; U.S. and international human rights organizations; members of the progressive news media (The Ed Schultz Show, Air America Radio, Democracy Now, The Nation Magazine, I.N.N. International News Net, Studs Terkel, the ACLU, Civil Rights Attorneys; etc.); the free and independent sovereign nations of the world (Vancouver BC, Canada, UK, Italy, Spain; etc.); the International Court of Justice aka the World Court and Cour internationale de Justice; and any other conduit of communication that might wish to know, share or actuate this true story.

Ms. Oprah Winfrey and Mr. George Clooney are two people whom I admire for their humanitarian and creative contributions to the world. With their support this story will not be silenced and human lives will be saved. Please send each of them “one” simple note requesting their support of the “Black File 7001” story and include my website and e-mail addresses. The movie “Syriana” spoke to me at a very personal level with Bob’s betrayal by the government he served that ultimately resulted in his death. Oprah Winfrey's all-girl leadership academy in South Africa is only one of the endless humanitarian contributions made to the world by this great human being. The education system has played a significant part of my life with a trilingual professional educator in my immediate family, a child currently attending a university and my own employment with the FBI in the third year of a fulltime academic curriculum. The purpose of that covert government service was initiated to prevent national and international organized crime organizations from distributing methamphetamine within the public school systems and throughout the United States of America.

For a time I prevented the false prophets who professed a love of children and humanity from preying on the innocent, but the “war on drugs” like the “war on terrorism” are only political mantras meant to perpetuate and fatten the cash cows of government profiteers.

PLEASE CONTACT MR. GEORGE CLOONEY WITH ONE LETTER ONLY:

Agent:
Mr. George Clooney
C/o Bryan Lourd
Creative Artists Agency
2000 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
424.288.2000
424.288.2900 fax

Publicist:
Mr. George Clooney
C/o Stan Rosenfield & Associates
2029 Century Park East
Suite 1190
Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA
310.286.7474
310.286.2255 fax

Movie Studio:
Smoke House
Attn: Mr. George Clooney
C/o Warner Bros.
4000 Warner Blvd., Bldg. 15
Burbank, California 91522 USA
818.954.4840
818.954.4860 fax

PLEASE CONTACT MS. OPRAH WINFREY WITH ONE LETTER ONLY:

The Oprah Winfrey Show
Attn: Ms. Oprah Winfrey
http://www.oprah.com/email/email_landing.jhtml

BLACK FILE 7001 CONTACT INFORMATION:

E-mail:
BlackFile7001@comcast.net

Tribe.net:
http://people.tribe.net/49395906-0c49-4c98-b92a-79f37b7927cb

You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/BlackFile7001

Comcast: Currently blocking my ability to establish a website online.

The Ed Schultz Show (Message Boards – “The Media” Section)
http://www.bigeddieradio.com

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies

New CIA Operation To Overthrow Chavez Exposed

2007-12-03T16:25:45Z

CIA Operation "Pliers" Uncovered in Venezuela

Psyop aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow President Chavez

By Eva Golinger
11/29/07 "Global Research," --- - An internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela. The memo summarizes the different scenarios that the CIA has been working on in Venezuela for the upcoming referendum vote on December 2nd. The Electoral Scenario, as it's phrased, confirms that the voting tendencies will not change substantially before Sunday, December 2nd, and that the SI (YES) vote in favor of the constitutional reform has an advantage of about 10-13 points over the NO vote. The CIA estimates abstention around 60% and states in the memo that this voting tendency is irreversible before the elections.

Officer Steere emphasizes the importance and success of the public relations and propaganda campaign that the CIA has been funding with more than $8 million during the past month - funds that the CIA confirms are transfered through the USAID contracted company, Development Alternatives, Inc., which set up operations in June 2002 to run the USAID Office for Transition Initiatives that funds and advises opposition NGOs and political parties in Venezuela. The CIA memo specifically refers to these propaganda initiatives as "psychological operations" (PSYOPS), that include contracting polling companies to create fraudulent polls that show the NO vote with an advantage over the SI vote, which is false. The CIA also confirms in the memo that it is working with international press agencies to distort the data and information about the referendum, and that it coordinates in Venezuela with a team of journalists and media organized and directed by the President of Globovision, Alberto Federico Ravell.

CIA Officer Michael Steere recommends to General Michael Hayden two different strategies to work simultaneously: Impede the referendum and refuse to recognize the results once the SI vote wins. Though these strategies appear contradictory, Steere claims that they must be implemented together precisely to encourage activities that aim toward impeding the referendum and at the same time prepare the conditions for a rejection of the results.

How is this to be done?

In the memo, the CIA proposes the following tactics and actions:

Take the streets and protest with violent, disruptive actions across the nation
Generate a climate of ungovernability
Provoke a general uprising in a substantial part of the population
Engage in a "plan to implode" the voting centers on election day by encouraging opposition voters to "VOTE and REMAIN" in their centers to agitate others
Start to release data during the early hours of the afternoon on Sunday that favor the NO vote (in clear violation of election regulations)
Coordinate these activities with Ravell & Globovision and international press agencies
Coordinate with ex-military officers and coupsters Pena Esclusa and Guyon Cellis - this will be done by the Military Attaché for Defense and Army at the US Embassy in Caracas, Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO)

To encourage rejection of the results, the CIA proposes:
Creating an acceptance in the public opinion that the NO vote will win for sure
Using polling companies contracted by the CIA
Criticize and discredit the National Elections Council
Generate a sensation of fraud
Use a team of experts from the universities that will talk about how the data from the Electoral Registry has been manipulated and will build distrust in the voting system
The CIA memo also talks about:
Isolating Chavez in the international community
Trying to achieve unity amongst the opposition
Seek an alliance between those abstentionists and those who will vote "NO"
Sustain firmly the propaganda against Chavez
Execute military actions to support the opposition mobilizations and propagandistic occupations
Finalize the operative preparations on the US military bases in Curacao and Colombia to provide support to actions in Venezuela
Control a part of the country during the next 72-120 hours
Encourage a military rebellion inside the National Guard forces and other components
Those involved in these actions as detailed in the CIA memo are:

The CIA Office in Venezuela - Office of Regional Affairs, and Officer Michael Steere
US Embassy in Venezuela, Ambassador Patrick Duddy
Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO) at the US Embassy in Caracas and Military Attaché Richard Nazario
Venezuelan Political Parties:
Comando Nacional de la Resistencia
Accion Democratica
Primero Justicia
Bandera Roja
Media:

Alberto Federico Ravell & Globovision
Interamerican Press Society (IAPA) or SIP in Spanish
International Press Agencies

Venezuelans:
Pena Esclusa
Guyon Cellis
Dean of the Simon Bolivar University, Rudolph Benjamin Podolski
Dean of the Andres Bello Catholic University, Ugalde
Students: Yon Goicochea, Juan Mejias, Ronel Gaglio, Gabriel Gallo, Ricardo Sanchez

Operation Tenaza has the objective of encouraging an armed insurrection in Venezuela against the government of President Chavez that will justify an intervention of US forces, stationed on the military bases nearby in Curacao and Colombia. The Operation mentions two countries in code: as Blue and Green. These refer to Curacao and Colombia, where the US has operative, active and equipped bases that have been reinforced over the past year and a half in anticipation of a conflict with Venezuela.

The document confirms that psychological operations are the CIA's best and most effective weapon to date against Venezuela, and it will continue its efforts to influence international public opinion regarding President Chavez and the situation in the country.

Operation Tenaza is a very alarming plan that aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow (again) its legitimate and democratic (and very popularly support) president. The plan will fail, primarily because it has been discovered, but it must be denounced around the world as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela's sovereignty.

The original document in English will be available in the public sphere soon for viewing and authenticating purposes. And it also contains more information than has been revealed here.

For the full text in Spanish, see: Operación Tenaza: Informe confidencial de la CIA devela plan de saboteo al referéndum del 2 de diciembre http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/n105390.html

********

[Note: The following article appeared in Issue No. 2367 (Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, 2007) of Informations Ouvrières (Labor News), the publication of the Workers Party of France. The translation is by The Organizer newspaper.]

Venezuela: What's at Stake in the Dec. 2 Referendum?

By ANDREU CAMPS

A referendum on the reforms to the Venezuelan Constitution proposed by President Hugo Chavez will be held Sunday, December 2nd. The reforms involve 33 articles of the Constitution and include such questions as the right of the president to seek re-election, the place and role of communal institutions, the unity of the national territory, and the control by the State of the nation's natural resources.

U.S. imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy have been waging a virulent campaign for many months now against Article 230 of the Constitutional Reform, which stipulates: "The term of office of the president is seven years. The president of the Republic can be re-elected for a new term in office." This is a formulation that does not limit the number of terms a president can serve.

These attacks against the Constitutional Reform process are the continuation of an uninterrupted campaign waged by these right-wing forces against Hugo Chavez ever since he took office -- a campaign that includes two attempted coup d'etats (which were defeated by the mass mobilizations of the Venezuelan people), two lockouts imposed by the powerful bosses' federation (Fedecamaras), and an attempt to remove Chavez from office via a binding referendum in August 2005 (an attempt that also was defeated by the uprising of the people).

Again, over the past weeks, we have witnessed multiple armed confrontations in the universities, followed by an open provocation by the King of Spain during the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago [about which we reported in the last issue of our paper].

The People Will Vote for National Sovereignty

No one can doubt that on December 2nd, the Venezuelan workers, youth and people will vote against this new attempt by the reactionary forces to deny them their sovereignty and to overturn a government and president they have freely elected.

They will vote against the attempts by the oligarchy and all the reactionary forces to return Venezuela to its previous role as a servant of Washington.

They will vote to continue the nationalizations, so that their State oil company, PDVSA, does not return to the claws of the imperialist masters, so that the funds generated by the exploitation of the nation's natural resources can continue to benefit the working people and youth of Venezuela.

They will vote for Article 302 of the Constitutional Reform, which states: "The State reserves itself the right -- for reasons of sovereignty, development and national interest -- to exploit the nation's oil and gas resources and to produce and control all services and goods of public interest and strategic character. The State will promote national manufacturing, making use of the raw materials derived from the exploitation of the country's natural resources."

This means that Venezuela will not only be an exporter of raw materials, it will export finished and semi-finished products, including oil-based products.

They will vote so that, according to Article 303, "PDVSA and all its affiliates and concessions can not privatized -- neither fully nor partially."

They will vote, as stipulated in Article 307, to ban all large business interests whose actions are contrary to the social interests of the nation."

They will vote, as stipulated in Article 318, so "that the national monetary system seeks to attain the essential objectives of the socialist State and of the people's well-being, above all other considerations. The Executive Branch and the Central Bank of Venezuela, in full coordination, will set the counry's monetary goals. ... The Central Bank has no autonomy. Its functions are subordinate to the national economic policies and to the Plan of National Development."

This means that Venezuela will reclaim its sovereignty over its Central Bank, which has, up till now, been in reality under the control of the International Monetary Fund.

The mass of the population will vote December 2nd for national sovereignty and for a total break with all forms of subordination to imperialism.

----

Sidebar Article:

Control Over Oil and Gas Resources at the Center of the Constitutional Debate

The current Constitution of Venezuela was adopted through popular consultation in 1999, after the election to a Constituent Assembly in July of that year. The Constituent Assembly was convened after the victory by Chavez in the December 1998 presidential election.

In November 2001, under the implementation provisions of the newly adopted Constitution, the government decreed the full control by the State over PDVSA, the large corporation in charge of oil and gas extraction in Venezuela. This was a corporation that functioned hitherto as a sort of state within a state, with 70 percent of its profits invested in 200 corporations based in the United States.

This affirmation by the Chavez government of the national character of PDVSA was one of the main factors that led the U.S. Embassy, with the support of the Spanish Embassy, to carry out an attempted military coup on April 11, 2002 -- an attempt that was smashed by the revolutionary mobilization of the Venezuelan people.

Since the last election, the Chavez government has forced the multinational corporations that discover new oil fields to become mixed-capital enterprises, with majority ownership and control by PDVSA, thereby reinforcing the role of State in the extraction of the nation's oil resources Up till that point, these oil fields were not under State control.

A large percentage of the proceeds from Venezuela's hydrocarbons, now controlled by the State, can thus be invested in social programs -- called "missions" by the government -- such as education, healthcare, public housing and basic urban infrastructure.

These billions of dollars, no longer in the coffers of the multinational corporations, are now NOT under the aegis of the IMF and World Bank. This is what imperialism finds intolerable. -- A.C.

posted in Noam Chomsky - 1 reply

Dictators in the Empire's Employ by Mumia Abu-Jamal

2007-11-26T00:29:17Z

Dictators in the Empire's Employ
[col. writ. 11/18/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

With the teeth of the Pakistani dictatorship now bared, we are beginning to see a mirror image of most of U.S. history throughout the last century.

Although perhaps best seen in the vicious wars of Latin America, it is a fact that the U.S. government supported brutal, violent dictatorships on every continent, almost always against popular, and especially workers movements.

Although most Americans would be hard pressed to actually recall the names of 4 U.S. backed dictators of the 20th century, it is a safe bet that the people who tried to survive in those countries will remember them for the rest of their lives.

From Haiti's infamous Duvaliers, to Cuba's Batista, there were no dictators too wretched, too violent, too vicious for the U.S. to support.

There's a good reason why when President Lyndon B. Johnson took the Oval Office after John Kennedy's assassination, he told one of his aides, "We've been running a damned branch of Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean."*

That's because Washington was essentially internationalizing its program of repression and McCarthyism, according to at least one Latin American country. Scholar (and former diplomat) Clara Nieto wrote, in her remarkable 2003 work, Masters of War, the story of how the U.S. got almost the entire continent to go its way:

At the Tenth Inter-American Conference requested by {former State Dept. chief John} Dulles and held in Caracas in 1954, he easily persuaded the meeting to adopt a declaration condemning international communism and advocating hemispheric solidarity and mutual defense against "Communist aggression." The chancellor of Guatemala, Guillermo Toriella, warned that on "the pretext of combating Communism, fundamental principles of democracy can be contravened, violations of human rights justified, and the principle of non-intervention infringed upon." The declaration, he argued was "the internationalization of McCarthyism." The majority - all dictatorships - supported it; Argentina (under Peron) voted against it and Mexico abstained. Costa Rica did not attend the meeting, since Jose Figueres refused to participate in this "assembly of dictators in a country governed by the most brutal and corrupt of them all, General Perez Jimenez" {C. Nieto, pp.138-139}.

Thus, generations were subjected to the terrorism of their own governments, their own armies, paid, and trained by the Americans. These U.S. trained terrorists launched wars against their own people; students, teachers, trade unionists, writers, intellectuals, priests, Indians, and beyond.

Yet, that was then. What now?

Despite all the gas and rap about "freedom", "democracy", and the like, the U.S. is, once again, depending on a dictator who has essentially shut down the Supreme Court, whipped lawyers in the streets, waged fraudulent elections, exiled his political opponents, and ruled with an iron fist. The differences between Burma and Pakistan could be measured in inches.

Yet, none of this really matters to the White House. What matters is what has always mattered. That the dictator do the bidding of his imperial masters - the people be damned.

There's a reason why Latin America has elected predominantly anti American governments in the past decade, and it had nothing to do with the easy media fiction that Hugo Chavez made them do it. For millions of people, they remember the so called 'secret wars' waged by armed puppets of the Americans-and they want no more of it.

Dictatorship 2 -- Democracy 0.

--(c) '07 maj

*[Source: Nieto, Clara, Masters of War: Latin America and the U.S. Aggression (From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years) {New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003} ]

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, framed and in prison, with what could be the final decision on his legal appeals possibly coming down soon. That decision could give Mumia his freedom, a new trial, life in prison, or execution. It is time to turn up the heat against this injustice.

Free Mumia!

For more on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436405.php

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Noam Chomsky - 0 replies