June 1st 2009, by Hugo Chávez Frías

It is amazing how deep our father Bolivar stirred around in the search of the revolutionary essence; just as he said in “the finding of the mysterious unknown of the free man.” In this huge task he put forward his thoughts before those of the great intellectuals and philosophers of the last two centuries. It is truly amazing how his most advanced ideas form a great slope, whose waters empty into that wonderful river called socialism.

This is exactly what happens with the equality issue. Let’s take a tour of two hundred years to confirm it.

Brazilian thinker Theotonio Dos Santos, in his book Concepto de clases sociales (Concept of social classes, printed by El Perro y la Rana editorial), says:

The representation of bourgeois society as a basic group of individuals who can differentiate into groups must be part of bourgeois ideology (…) This representation expresses exactly the essential interest of the bourgeoisie to hide the class nature of its society and postulate its society as offering equal opportunities to all individuals.

Equality of opportunity, true, but increasingly based on the growing inequality of economic and legal power, as well as material privileges that excessively reproduce the inequality of conditions.

One hundred and twenty years ago, Karl Marx said it in the Critique of the Gotha Program, written in 1875:

Paradoxically, what appears as the end of socialism is, precisely, the integral development of unequalness among men, unequalness of their aspirations and capacities, the unequalness of their personalities. But this personal unequalness will no longer mean a difference of economic power or inequality of material rights or privileges. It can only be extended in an atmosphere of material and economic equality.

And our Bolívar, fifty six years before Marx, pointed out with meridian clearness in Angostura, in 1819:

In my opinion, Legislators, the fundamental principle of our system depends immediately and exclusively on equality established and exercised in Venezuela. (…)Nature makes men unequal in terms of their genius, temperament, force, and characters. Laws correct this difference by giving man a place in society so that education, industry, service, virtue may give him a fictitious equality, properly called political and social equality. The bringing together of all classes in a State is an eminently beneficial inspiration, where diversity multiples in proportion to the propagation of the species. By this single step, cruel discord has been torn out by the roots. How much jealousy, rivalry and hatred have been thus avoided!

These are the reasons why, the more we study the history of ideas, the more we deepen and understand the great thinkers of and for humanity, starting from (Jesus) Christ up to Fidel. This is why, every day, with more strength and obligation, our revolution is more Bolivarian than ever!

Christ, as I have said, was a true socialist thinker. And even more important, he was a consistent socialist fighter up to his last song:

Everything is consummated.

From an old encyclopaedia that I carry with me since my days as lieutenant of the Armoured Batallion Bravos de Apure, during those days when a small group of young patriotic officers of the Army (including myself) started to create the first cells of the Bolivarian Movement, I draw out the following passage:

In times of great internal and external severity, in view of the growing misery of the poor people and the greatest concentration of wealth in few hands, the great prophets appeared and urged the revision of this situation. In 765 BC, Amos, the most ancient and probably the greatest of those prophets, appeared and launched on behalf of Jehovah his curse against the rich people: But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem… because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek, (Amós, 2, 5/7).

Afterwards it reads as follows:

We have found identical tones in Oseas and, especially in Isaiah: ‘Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! (Is., 5, 8 )

And the Jesus arrived to condemn the rich people. Here you have the Sermon of the Mount:

Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. (Luke, 6, 20-25).

For you compatriot, man, woman, youth, who read my Sunday lines, the last day of May I tell you: Let he who has eyes see, and he who has ears, hear!

Capitalism proclaims to the four winds the non-existence of classes nor inequality; since there is an alleged equality of opportunity that guarantees all the enjoyment, privileges, and rights to all the persons on earth, when we know that all its perversity is precisely based on breaking every possible balance between legality and justice. In crisis times, even more, when masks fall, disclosing many capitalists as true mafia bosses. An expensive propaganda campaign has been launched by all the media outlets in order to make believe that our Bolivarian Revolution will deprive you of your car, your apartment, warehouse, arepera [1] and everything you own thanks to your effort and work.

But the truth is that, those who proclaim it are the same ones who have literally hoarded vehicles and speculate barefacedly with the sale and rent of real state. If during the last ten years these oligarchs living in our country have dared to attempt against the sacred right of our people to food, education, and health; it is not surprising that they will likewise attempt against Venezuelans’ right to have property. While we struggle for pulling out the cruel conflict, as Bolívar said, the media outlets at the service of the empire and the most corrupted oligarchical sector of the country promote it in order to, precisely, hide their felonies.

This is why I urge people to be on the revolutionary alert and watchfulness, even those compatriots who – even not being part of our Revolution – suffer because of the overflowing perversity of those who boast about being their defenders and representatives. It is up to us to keep working to establish and practice equality, getting it under the following principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” a Christian principle that sinks its roots in the most distant but alive primitive Christianity.

Time and the passing of history have demonstrated that there is a maturation process of the people; that the current political, organizational, and ideological maturity is not the same as ten years ago. Today, there is a common, popular, and Venezuelan sense that never existed before; as well as an eternal solidarity and a way of organizing and understanding their street, their parish, their barrio, and their history.

Events in the midst of development, as Walter Martinez would say, show that governments must always adapt themselves to the maturity and level of the people they work for. Learning is permanent, and we have had hard but valuable lessons. Venezuela has constructed a history of dignity and struggle, in spite of so many difficulties. And facts have demonstrated the mature degree of this people; the maturity to rule and decide in the name of the people. We are confirming that the creative powers that the great Aquiles Nazoa recognized in us.

It’s time to give substance, strength, and movement to the communal democracy, the democracy communard of Kléber Ramírez. The new phase starts now in Venezuela, developing a strategy focused on “producing food, science, and dignity” and strengthening the dynamism of the participative and socialist democracy.

The time for the community to start its movement towards the full exercise of its power and its political responsibility has come. We have walked far, but there is still path left to walk, let’s go on creating, as Mészaros would say in The Challenge and the Burden of Historical Time:

The creation of a truly equal society demands the radical downfall of the exploitative structural hierarchies that were established during thousands of years.

But the communal model must be ours; it must emerge from popular wisdom, from the clear understanding of their territory; of their connection with their history and country. From everything that causes us to be called Venezuelan people.

We must speed up the structure of the communal councils, the technical tables, increasing their participative power and transforming the community into a reason of state; this is the path; always together with Simón Rodríguez and Bolívar.

“If we do not learn a dynamic lesson from history, there is no reason to suppose that we will find it in another place,” says the great master and Bolivarian August Mijares: it is all about raising people’s consciousness, “the affirmative Venezuelan aspect.”

In history, we have great examples that must be useful as objective references. The Commune of Paris, the experience of the agrarian commune in China; the indigenous Venezuelan, Colombian, Paraguayan communards are all models that offer keys for us to do what we have to; being original, as the socialist Master of America, Simón Rodríguez, who proposed an original Toparquía (small dominion) for our America. But one thing is certain and Lenin said so in a short article called, “In Memory of the Commune”: “The cause of the Commune is the cause of the social revolution; it is the cause of the complete political and economical emancipation of workers; it is the cause of the world proletariat. And in this sense it is immortal.”

Bolivarian and socialist communards: let’s continue clearing up “The Mysterious Unknown…”

With Christ, with Bolívar, with Fidel:
¡We will win!

Hugo Chávez Frías

Note: [1] Arepera: sort of restaurant where you can buy Arepra. The word “arepa” may originate from the language of the Caracas natives (north coast of Venezuela) that means “maize.” An arepa is a bread made of corn originating from the northern Andes in South America, and which has now spread to other areas in Latin America.

It’s no holds barred and all out war against the Odious Oids who are shredding our moral code as set forth in the Declaration of Human Rights. To be victorious, we must create powerful audio-visuals that give citizens the information they need to bring change to America and the world.

A Film Student’s Breakfast

“Federico Fellini could help save democracy,” said Lorenzo, an 18 year-old UC Santa Barbara film student, to his classmates during the complimentary Sunday brunch served by retired actress Rona Barb to her youthful room tenants.

“My dad,” voiced Roger, another film student, “says democracy is dead, and our civil justice system and lawyers are being neutered by corporations that want to get away with murder without having to pay damages. My dad’s an attorney — he knows.”

“That’s right,” said Lorenzo. “My father is making a movie about corporations stealing the planet from under our feet by using frames. It’ll blow people’s minds. My dad worked with Fellini. He saw people in Italy change after City Of Women came out.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!” jumped in Ms. Barb, participating in the discussion while pouring tea.

“No, it’s not crazy at all!” protested Lorenzo. “The movie I’m helping my father make is about framing ideas to reshape the way we see the world. I learned a lot about that subject when I assisted in filming Professor Lakoff.”

“Okay, okay, but changing how we see the world and saving democracy? Changing the way Italian men see women? Wow! That’ll take a lot more than a movie,” argued Ms. Barb as the boys laughed.

“It’s like stopping global warming. That will take a lot more than Al Gore’s movie.”

“Some books changed the world, and movies can do it faster,” insisted Lorenzo. “For years the media has been putting down trial lawyers as if every lawyer was a bad guy. They pushed Congress to vote against public protection and cut damage awards so low that lawyers can no longer take big corporations who hurt people to court. People lost and business won.”

“So, what’s that got to do with a movie about saving democracy?” Ms Barb queried.

“A lot. If you’re hurt, you should have the right to sue. So corporations spread the myth that trial lawyers are all bad. That’s a dirty corporate trick. Professor Lakoff suggests that we call attorneys ‘public protection attorneys,’ not ‘trial lawyers.’ The ‘public protection attorney’ frame reminds people of the good attorneys do. It would look real bad for business to try and smear public protection, right? That’s all got to do with framing language! The word ‘trial’ is a scary word, but ‘protection’ — that’s a good word. People would wonder what is really going on if they saw ‘tort reform’ as an attack on public protection. Get it? Cutting protection for people — that’s not reform, that’s a con job.”

“So? I still don’t get it. What’s that got to do with a movie saving democracy?” persisted Ms. Barb.

“Well,” Roger, answered, quoting his dad, “‘Lawyers should never have to defend themselves in propria persona in the court of public opinion.’ They know better. That’s what they always tell other people. Well, they ought to follow their own advice. A movie can show Americans that controlled media is destroying our civil defense system. That’s part of democracy.”

“Thanks, Roger! Good argument! I rest my case,” beamed Lorenzo.

Sound frames and images of light

Young energy is our greatest national asset. Let’s help put that energy to work. To be a civilized nation, America must do all it can to unfold the full potential of our youth. Young adults finish college and are unable to find jobs that put what they learned to good use. Many grads end up bagging groceries or flipping burgers for years. What future do we offer them? None! The real question then becomes: “Are we a civilized country?” Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization. He replied: ” I think it would be a very good idea.”

An unforgettable film about civilization and the renewal of respect for human rights, a film showing how nations, after the horrors of World War II, attempted to establish a global civilization under international law with conscience and responsibility toward all life — this is what we need. For a brief period, countries achieved common consent on civilized principles and spelled them out in the magnificent 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All UN Member States solemnly agreed “[t]o cause it [the Declaration] to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.” That was a solemn promise. Most failed to honor it, including the U.S.

Now 58 years later the appointed pResident of the US and his Attorney General think that human rights are quaint, old-fashioned ideas written on weird, out-of-style documents — like the US Constitution, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Exposing this stark contrast through the power of cinema will shock most audiences, and that is why we need such a movie.

So, film students got talking about coming to democracy’s rescue with what the great master of film, Fellini, called cine magia – cinemagic. When informed, young people want to take up the cause and honor that pledge of 1948 by inspiring citizens to act in defense of humanity’s future.

Uneco’s film, Deflating The Elephant, will illustrate the crucial articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which are essential to our survival in this dangerous century, and vividly frame one of humanity greatest achievements with cinematic images. After viewers of Deflating The Elephant see how far we have fallen since the Declaration’s creation, their hearts and minds will be transformed and moved to renew the covenant.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Preamble Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,
The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11 Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13 Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14 Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15 Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16 Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17 Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20 Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21 Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23 Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25 Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26 Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27 Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29 Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Few clearly perceive how dangerous the world situation is becoming. Inhuman money controls mass media and deliberately broadcasts as many frivolous distractions as possible to keep people from noticing the fascist beast closing in on millions of unsuspecting victims. Current diabolical schemers make Hitler and Stalin look like dilettantes. Their skills at diverting attention by frequently sounding terror-lurking-under-every-bush alarms have been honed to perfection. A movie can expose them with scandalous evidence.

As a boy, I experienced arrogant Italian Fascism and the evil of rightwing fanatical religionism. In December 2000, when America was flagrantly betrayed by five black-robed hypocrites, shivers of horror went down my spine. Our grassroots organization immediately net-published a large front-page headline: “DAY OF INFAMY – Fascist Coup in the United States!” which was printed over a photo of marching Nazi SS troopers. Friends objected that to use the word “fascist” was an exaggeration. Now, six year later, most are as outraged as we were then and have been ever since.

In 2004, a second national election was stolen by the same fascist cabal and American democracy de facto ceased to exist, except in the deluded minds of sleeping TV network audiences.

That year, University of California Berkeley Professor George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, appeared and was an instant bestseller. What it revealed is how linguistic frames influence social conditions.

Reading Don’t Think of an Elephant was a stunning clarification for me of how evil ideas throughout history are framed to allow “the few” to control and oppress “the many.” Indeed, ideas projected through invisible linguistic frames can transform the mind.

Lakoff’s scientific explanations brought back memories of working with Federico Fellini and learning from him how cinematic images change society. For example, after Fellini’s Casanova and City of Women, I had watched downcast Italian males leaving theaters, stunned. Exaggerated Italian machismo was crushed by these great films and never fully recovered.

Fellini’s demolition of century-old prejudices and Lakoff’s linguistic art of framing suggested to me a potential cinematic cure for America.

It was my good fortune to share Federico’s thoughts about dreams and metaphysical questions while he was conceiving his mysterious story, The Voyage of G. Mastorna. This work contains some of his visions and speculations about the human state in this world and after death. During that unforgettable experience, Fellini explained how cinematic images liberate, dissolve fear, and open our lives to perceiving the subtlest aspects of the world. That “sceneggiatura”– The Voyage of G. Mastorna — is now known as the most famous never-filmed-screenplay in the history of cinema.

Fellini’s insight on the magic of light gives us a glimpse of the profundity of his art. He said:

“What is light? If cinema is images, light is its evident essence. In cinema, light is idea, sentiment, color, profundity, atmosphere, style, narrative, poetic expression. Light is the magic power that adds, cancels, softens, suggests, exalts, alludes, underscores, and renders the fantastic credible and acceptable, or, on the contrary, creates transparencies through which the gray daily reality becomes rich, fairytale like. With a single reflector and a pair of lights an opaque face, with as much expressiveness as a bare knee, appears intelligent, mysterious, fascinating; an open, benevolent, peaceful face becomes sinister, menacing, frightening.
The poorest scene — squalid, shabby — can with light reveal enchanting or ominous aspects…barely moving a 5000 watt light and lighting up an opposite light, all the feelings of anguish vanishes and everything is serene, comfortable, homey. Finally, film is written with light; the style of an authentic filmmaker is expressed with light.”

How they stole our Commonwealth

Exposing how we have been robbed is sobering.

Conservatives used many deceiving frames to steal from us. We’ll tackle here just a few of the metaphors they employed to deform one of democracy’s most fundamental pillars: justice.

Mixing Fellini’s cinematic secrets with Lakoff’s scientific brilliance is like mixing nitro and glycerine — which makes up dynamite. Liars and thieves are in for a big surprise.

The neo-crooks have been fanning the flames of a still unexplained 9/11 tragedy into a fabulously profitable perennial frame: “war-on-terror.” What should have been an international police hunt by civilized nations has turned into a deadly, trillion-dollar con job. In reality, there is no war. The phony “war” frame provides a legalistic and pseudo-moral justification for flag waving, criminal wars of aggression, and the dismantling of our Constitution. The 9/11 Commission colluded with Bush and Cheney so that the inseparable twins were conveniently questioned together – to avoid contradictions — behind closed doors, and not under oath for fear of future indictments for obstructing justice. The questioners were all tail-wagging administration’s lap dogs.

Lights and cameras will capture the criminal activities of the national security organizations that colonize the world with prisons, torture chambers, and concentration camps. The horrors of so-called rendition (criminal kidnapping with torture outsourcing) and the deployment of massive domestic electronic spying networks that outrageously violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens and intrude even on their attorney-client privilege will be exposed.

What was once a country of laws is now a country run by a self-declared fundamentalist despot claiming the privilege to violate any law he chooses. The film will show how fundamentalist Christianoids want to control women’s bodies and intrude in the privacy of our bedrooms, just as Mussolini did in 1929 with the Lateran Pact that gave the Pope and Vatican clergy control of family law and imposed obligatory religious education. The danger of religionistic fanatics, whether Muslim mullahs or Texas Baptist Christianoids, deserves close monitoring.

“[I]n order to understand the danger posed by Christian fundamentalist, we must first take a look at what they believe. What is it that these folks hold to be fundamental? What is it that they insist one must do in order to be saved? The answer is threefold: First, in order to be a Christian, a person must believe that the Bible is the one and only infallible, truly inerrant, source of truth, and that the holy books of all other religions are of demonic origin; secondly, one must believe in an afterlife, that every human being will end up in either Heaven or Hell. And finally, it is essential that one understand that in order to go to Heaven he must accept Jesus Christ (the only Son of God) as his own personal savior, otherwise, and without exception, regardless of how good a life he may have lived, he will be sent to the agonizing fires of an eternally burning Hell. That is their doctrine … that is what they believe to be The Truth of God. From: “The Most Evil People in the World,” by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

In his book: Gangs of America, Ted Nace reveals the impostrous way the U.S. was taken over by big business. Historically, it was the battle between democracy and corporations that started the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party was an action to block the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation that ever existed, from monopolizing the American commodities markets, starting with tea. The American Revolution was a pragmatic economic rebellion against an overbearing corporation and an oppressive government thoroughly intertwined with it.

The East India Company had planned to replace independent local merchants with a company-owned distribution system, i.e., an early version of what we now call “vertical integration,” like, for example, oil companies owning wells, refineries, and gas stations.

Boston pamphleteers — we had a free press then — laid out the scenario in detail, warning that if the British were to succeed in bringing the tea distribution system under sole control of the East India Company, they would inevitably repeat the same scheme for other imported commodities. Sound familiar? Think of the WTO.

The East India Company, if once they get Footing in this (once) happy country, will leave no Stone unturned to become your Masters. They are an opulent Body, and Money or Credit is not wanting amongst them. They have a designing, depraved, and despotic Ministry to assist and support them. They themselves are well versed In TYRANNY, PLUNDER, OPPRESSION and BLOODSHED. Whole Provinces labouring under the Distresses of Oppression, Slavery, Famine, and the Sword, are familiar to them. Thus they have enriched themselves, Thus they are become the most powerful Trading Company in the Universe. Excerpt from a broadside signed “A Mechanic,” Philadelphia, December 4, 1773.

Imagine a private company so unaccountable that it conducts its own criminal trials and runs its own jails; so dominant it possesses a 250,000 man army, twice the size of Britain’s, to fight company wars; and so predatory that for more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled white.” A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes 10% of the government’s revenues. Even the King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company!

When the cargo ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, approximately 150 men assembled at the home of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal’s founder. They came from many backgrounds: some were apprentices, some tradesmen, some wealthy owners of businesses. By dawn, the entire shipment of tea had been destroyed. The American Revolution would soon be underway.

One glaring example in a long record of uncontrolled corporate evil was unleashed against this country in 1936:

[C]onsider this unpunished crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B. F. Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing.

In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation. Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel-powered General Motors buses.

By 1949, more than 100 electric transit systems in 45 systems had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit anti-trust violations. But the judge set the fine for each company at $5,000. Seven executives were fined one dollar each. After the conviction, the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. Gangs of America, Introduction p. 7.

As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once observed, “Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.”

In 1882-83, Judge Stephen Field’s Ninth Circuit Court, with twisted judicial sophistry, established the personhood of corporations in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. This self-evident absurdity has proven to be a menace to democracy and humanity.

Judge Field’s tortuous legalese behind the creation of immortal, frankensteinian corporations coincided with the view of Professor John Norton Pomeroy, namely:

“The truth cannot be evaded that, for the purpose of protecting rights, the property of all business and trading corporations IS the property of the individual corporators. A state act depriving a business corporation of its property without due process of law, does in fact deprive the individual corporators of their property. In this sense, and within the scope of these grand safeguards of private rights, there is no real distinction between artificial persons or corporations, and natural persons.”

Ted Nace explains why an understanding of this is critical:

As simple as this false argument sounds, it was a significant departure from established legal doctrine, which had always made a distinction between corporate property and individual property. The most crucial distinction is that owning shares in a company allows a person to own property without being subject to the sort of accountability to the community that normally attends the ownership of property [emphasis added]. For that reason, courts had never assumed that shareholders in a corporation should expect equal rights; on the contrary, the enjoyment by corporate shareholders of privileges such as limited liability justified applying special restrictions to corporations and their owners. Gangs of America, p. 118.

It is self-evident that giving legal personhood to a corporation, while enjoying all other rights, also creates the right to do wrong and escape responsibility. In the 2006 California primaries, the residents of Humboldt County said enough is enough and successfully challenged corporate personhood.

In states across the country Tuesday, primary elections named candidates for Congress, governorships and other important offices. But the most interesting, and perhaps significant, election did not involve an individual. Rather, it was about an idea.

In Northern California’s Humboldt County, voters decided by a 55-45 margin that corporations do not have the same rights — based on the supposed “personhood” of the combines — as citizens when it comes to participating in local political campaigns.
Until Tuesday in Humboldt County, corporations were able to claim citizenship rights, as they do elsewhere in the United States. In the context of electoral politics, corporations that were not headquartered in the county took advantage of the same rules that allowed individuals who are not residents to make campaign contributions in order to influence local campaigns.

But, with the passage of Measure T, an initiative referendum that was placed on the ballot by Humboldt County residents, voters have signaled that they want out-of-town corporations barred from meddling in local elections.

Measure T was backed by the county’s Green and Democratic parties, as well as labor unions and many elected officials in a region where politics are so progressive that the Greens — whose 2004 presidential candidate, David Cobb, is a resident of the county and a active promoter of the challenges to corporate power mounted by Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County and the national Liberty Tree Foundation — are a major force in local politics.

The “Yes on T” campaign was rooted in regard for the American experiment, from its slogan “Vote Yes for Local Control of Our Democracy,” to the references to Tuesday’s election as a modern-day “Boston Tea Party,” to the quote from Thomas Jefferson that was highlighted in election materials: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Just as Jefferson and his contemporaries were angered by dominance of the affairs of the American colonies by King George III and the British business combines that exploited the natural and human resources of what would become the United States — and wary of the machinations of those who would establish an American economic royalism — so Humboldt County residents were angered by the attempts of outside corporate interests to dominate local politics.

Wal-Mart spent $250,000 on a 1999 attempt to change the city of Eureka’s zoning laws in order to clear the way for one of the retail giant’s big-box stores. Five years later, MAXXAM Inc., a forest products company, got upset with the efforts of local District Attorney Paul Gallegos to enforce regulations on its operations in the county and spent $300,000 on a faked-up campaign to recall him from office. The same year saw outside corporations that were interested in exploiting the county’s abundant natural resources meddling in its local election campaigns.

That was the last straw for a lot of Humboldt County residents. They organized to put Measure T on the ballot, declaring, “Our Founding Fathers never intended corporations to have this kind of power.”

“Every person has the right to sign petition recalls and to contribute money to political campaigns. Measure T will not affect these individual rights,” explained Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, a resident of Eureka who was one of the leaders of the Yes on T campaign. “But individuals hold these political rights by virtue of their status as humans in a democracy and, simply put, a corporation is not a person.”
Despite the logic of that assessment, the electoral battle in Humboldt County was a heated one, and Measure T’s passage will not end it. Now, the corporate campaign will move to the courts. So this is only a start. But what a monumental start it is!

Sopoci-Belknap was absolutely right when she portrayed Tuesday’s vote as nothing less than the beginning of “the process of reclaiming our county” from the “tyranny” of concentrated economic and political power.

Surely Tom Paine would have agreed. It was Paine who suggested to the revolutionaries of 1776, as they dared challenge the most powerful empire on the planet, that: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of the new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.”

It is time to renew the American experiment, to rebuild its battered institutions on the solid foundation of empowered citizens and regulated corporations. Let us hope that the spirit of ’76 prevailed Tuesday in Humboldt County will spread until that day when American democracy is guided by the will of the people rather than the campaign contribution checks of the corporations that are the rampaging “empires” of our age.

Expanding on the danger of corporate personhood, the movie screen will explode with images of corporate abuse against individuals and society.

The near future in light of history

America won its greatest victory against Italian fascists, German Nazis, and Japanese imperialists while fighting for democracy under the leadership of liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After WWII, humanity renewed its hope in the flowering of a great civilization founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a world in which nuclear holocausts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never again happen; where war, death-camps, fascist oppression, and gulags, would forever be mere memories of past insanity; where international law would settle disputes and people everywhere would become self-governing; where victorious nations would cease selling instruments of death and instead spread the profitable tools of healthcare, economic prosperity, and environmental conservation.

However, the realization of this hope, this beautiful dream, never did come to pass.

Bloodshed and destruction quickly resumed and continue to this day: Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, Africa, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, and Iraq. Why did all members of the UN including the U.S. fail so miserably? Because of the perennial Oids!

The Odious Oids – who are they?

Thomas Paine said: “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” So, we are going to tell you about the Oids, and then insult them with every name in the book. Read on. 
Christianoids

To pre-empt the extreme rightwing’s evil reaction to well-deserved insults, we refer hateful and blind Christianoids to the ultimate authority on how to deal with hypocrites: Jesus of Nazareth — but not the fictional straw-Jesus invented by triple-born-again fundamentalists (we say “triple-born-again” advisedly because to be a Christian already means to be born again, so to be a “new born” Christian means to be a “new born-new born,” which equals being born three times!).

Deflating the Elephant takes us into the Dantesque other-worldly nightmare of triple-born Christianoids who commandingly claim that a fetus is an unborn soul or child even when the Bible, their ultimate authority, contradicts them. Scripture speaks of life from birth to death, not from conception to decay, of the soul entering the body when the body receives its first breath, and ending when it exhales its last. To “expire” is defined as “to die; to breathe one’s last breath; to exhale; to breathe out.” Confer Genesis 2:7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Clearly, the body of Adam came to life not when God completed the molding of his flesh from clay, but when his body received its soul by inhaling the spirit, which is God’s breath and which must return to God when we breathe out or exhale our last breath.

When we die, our flesh and organs are still living and are in fact viable enough to be transplanted into another person. However, once the soul is gone with the last breath, the body –even if parts of it are technically living — is not a person. So it is for the fetus.

Whether it is aborted by nature or choice, the fetus never incarnated the divine breath, the soul. Until the first breath vivifies it into a person, the fetus is only a vessel, a body, and not a living human being. This fact will never be accepted by Christianoids because it is one more politically inconvenient truth. Unborn flesh (a miscarried fetus?) has never been legally considered a person. Even so, fascist rightwing pseudo-Christians backing the Bushist partyline are unabashedly trying to trump thousands of years of precedent.

Jesus would lash out against these Christianoids — witness his kicking the moneychangers out of the temple — for he never spared the feelings of hypocrites (hypocrite Ann Coulter so perfectly incarnates nasty neo-fascism that she uses this Jesus episode to attack liberals when most money changers are conservatives; in doing this she dumbly set herself up again as the proverbial dumb blonde she is). So, Deflating the Elephant will treat hypocrites by throwing caution to the wind and mercilessly hurling at them every insult in the book, just as Jesus did without fear:

Matthew 23:
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!…

14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides…
17 Ye fools and blind!…
19 Ye fools and blind!…
23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone.
24 Ye blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous…
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell?

So, who are the Oids!? They are that recurring percentage of psychotics throughout history that makes peace and justice impossible. It is imperative that Oids be exposed if we are to cure humanity and create a progressive world.

By way of explanation, adding “oid” to any word alters its meaning to: “made in the form of” or “pretending to be.” For example, when “oid” is affixed to the word “sphere,” it becomes the word “spheroid,” which means “made in the form of a sphere” (not a real sphere). “Oid” is, therefore, a label for “hypocrites” and for all those who pretend to be something they are not. A Christianoid can then be defined as “a pseudo-Christian” or anyone pretending to be a follower of Jesus while at the same time supporting war, torture, and the death penalty.”

Let’s be creative here.

A patrioid is a flag-waving idiot who forgot that the flag represents the Union established by the U.S. Constitution. “Monkeys can wave flags, but that does not make them patriots!” noted Scott Ritter (who is a real patriot).

All evildoers can be lumped under a single label: “humanoids” — that is, beasts made in the shape of humans.

What makes the Oids what they are? It takes great writers and film authors to penetrate and expose the dark workings of reptilian brains in humanoid form. Indeed, to explain the intrinsic Oid madness and how to deal with it is a Dantesque, Shakespearean, or Fellinesque task.

Emotional honesty vs. political correctness

Recently Senator Murtha – who is to be highly commended for is outspokenness against the war — protested criminal military actions in Iraq. While he deserves praise for this, it is evident that Senator Murtha is unfortunately still a victim of political correctness. After the Haditha massacre committed by U.S. troops, he said: “One woman, as I understand it in talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over her child, pleading for mercy, and they shot her in cold blood. That’s the thing that’s so disturbing.” What an astounding hyper-understatement!

As much as Senator Murtha must be admired for his courage, in following the Washington-accepted PC communications style imposed by the conservative culture of hypocrisy, he failed to galvanize public condemnation. How can murder in cold blood be referred to as simply “disturbing” — is such a satanic crime not outrageous beyond belief? Diabolical? Insane? Nauseating? Evil? Does it not call for Divine vengeance?

To bring it home, just imagine yourself finding your own family slaughtered in cold blood and hearing someone politely saying: “I am troubled” or “I’m disturbed.” Emotionally honest people express their pain and anger openly and directly.

One trick satanic corpo-media uses is to make justified outrage and righteous indignation look like hysteria. Any sincere expression of shock and revulsion in the face of a crime is treated as excess so insistently by criminal media whores, that all truth is neutralized and soon forgotten.

This is how the odious media-oids subliminally train decent people to restrain sincere dismay, disgust, and rage to grotesque levels of apparent indifference to the suffering of others. We are told by inhuman monsters never to “lose our cool,” never to let anger roar to the level of rage in our voices, never to dare call killers murderers, especially if they are a part of our own despicable government.

Roots of terrorism

The kind of shameful injustice deliberately perpetrated in Haditha against the innocent without remorse, honest apology, or meaningful restitution is the proverbial root of all terrorism and the cause of endless violence.

Deflating the Elephant will examine some historical instances of terrorism with the stark realism of Gillo Pontecorvo’s famous film, The Battle of Algiers (which the Pentagon is studying today).

One example: For centuries, Samson, a suicide terrorist, has been viewed as a biblical hero, invoking the same Semitic God as he brought down a crowded temple in Gaza and killed 3000 Philistines as Muslims invoke when they slaughter innocents and blow themselves up. This evokes a strange similarity to the destruction of Manhattan’s World Trade Center 3000 years later. Samson did not bring down the temple because he hated freedom — that’s bush-shit — he did it after having been cruelly blinded and brutally chained to a stone mill for many years. He probably loved freedom, but had no hope for it or for justice being done. As a consequence, he committed an internecine terrorist act.

Not a single corporate media whore has mentioned the glaring fact that the Bible regards Samson’s act of terror as a good thing. For centuries Christian cultures have accepted it as justifiable revenge on the part of a badly persecuted Jewish Samson. The neo-cons never called him a terrorist! Figure out that one. Doesn’t God talk to Bush? Is God a racist? Is America the only “nation under God” or is God above all nations? Confusing, to say the least.

Deactivating the Oids

Let’s confront this failed Administration of appointed criminals and all who betrayed us in Congress, regardless of party, and kick them out of office. We can do it by peaceful resistance, boycotts, loud protests, massive turnouts at the polls, cleaning up our voting and election systems, and, if it becomes necessary, by calling general strikes in the spirit of a full-fledged Gandhian revolution.

Our reward will be an economically sustainable future where wealth is multiplied by all, for all, with fair compensation for labor and renewal of our environment so that at last we can lift the poor out of despair, increase our general security and wellbeing, and eliminate most crime.

A stirring progressive future

In conclusion, a stirring progressive future can be ours if we educate ourselves and invest some of our time and resources to actualize the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution. By learning the art of language framing we can participate in deactivating the Oids and in finally deflating the elephant. When progressives unite in their common vision, the fascists who have taken over our country will scurry into the woodwork. Then our world will be renewed and the future will be very bright.

Both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. Ref. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Rolling Stone article.
To learn how the Oids did it and about their plans to steal the next one, read Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse.

First intended as a letter on collective madness to a good but unfortunately impassioned Jewish writer deeply-rooted in that irreducible denial in which most members of ethnic or political tribes seek refuge when faced with facts demonstrating injustice on their part, this article evolved in 2002 to address the next-to-impossible task of distilling objective understanding, just settlements, and mutually beneficial solutions in irrational conflicts between nations, religions, and political ideologies.

Suicide terrorism before Christ

When writing about suicide bombers, it is odd that no journalist has yet associated contemporary “suicidal terrorism” with the Old Testament’s first report of a suicide terrorist:

The temple was crowded with men and women. All the leading Philistines were there. There were something like three thousand people on the roof, watching Samson. Samson called out to Yahweh:

“Lord Yahweh, remember me.  Give me strength this last time, and let me be avenged at one blow for my two eyes.”

He put his arms around the two central pillars supporting the building, his right arm around one and his left around the other. He cried out:

“Let me die with the Philistines!” And then he leaned forward with all his strength, and the temple fell on the chiefs and on all the people who were in it.  He killed more people at his death than he had killed in his life.”  Judges 16: 27-30

Samson, after being blinded by Delilah and made a slave, was chained to a millstone for many years and ultimately chose a suicidal act of terror to destroy his oppressors.

When I was as a child my teachers didn’t refer to Samson as an evil terrorist for destroying his oppressors and sacrificing his own life in the process. Quite the contrary, Samson was regarded as a hero. In fact, “Samson and Delilah” is one among the “Heroes of the Bible” series. In an early blockbuster movie with Victor Mature as Samson, Samson’s suicidal terrorist act is glorified.

To Christians and Jews Samson has been portrayed as a great hero; nowhere in all these centuries is there a reproach from God for his deadly act. How very interesting, therefore, that today Jewish, Christian, and Moslem writers have ignored this biblical story, especially since the number of innocent Philistines who were crushed by the collapsing temple was around 3000 – strangely, almost the same number of people who perished on September 11 in the temple of modern international business and money exchange. The World Trade Center was brought down by suicidal terrorists invoking the same Semitic God Samson invoked in the distant past when seeking revenge.

Fosse Ardeatine

In order to forestall the all-too-predictable accusations of anti-Semitism for speaking out clearly against injustice, the following is a true episode from my own life, the event which spawned my lifelong opposition to injustice and tyranny.

In 1943 during World War II my family sheltered several Jewish neighbors in our apartment at 104 via Agostino De Pretis, where the German army had established an officers’ club on the third floor. I was barely 13 years old, and a good part of my day, when air raids permitted, was taken up carrying buckets of water to our apartment. I walked down seven flights of stairs and then about a mile from home to a public water fountain, stood in a long line, filled and carried back two big heavy buckets of wonderful Roman spring water, then climbed the stairs, trying to dodge questions from the “portiere” as to why the Vidali Family seemed to use so much more water than any other tenant.

On March 23, 1944, an Italian resistance fighter camouflaged as a street sweeper set up a bomb in a cleaning cart and exploded it when Company XI of Battalion III of the German SS Polizei Regiment Bozen marched in Via Rasella only a few blocks from my home. 33 German SS were killed. Gunfire and explosions between the Italian resistance and SS followed.

Just as the attack occurred I was walking back with my water buckets and found myself barred from going home. I tried to change direction by taking a side street, but all streets were being blocked. Male civilians were being grabbed off the street and loaded on trucks by armed soldiers and police. My life was saved that terror-filled afternoon by the tearful intervention of my 19 year-old cousin Stella, who pleaded with a young German officer to let me pass.

The next day 330 Italians of all ages were transported by the SS to caves known as “Fosse Ardeatine” and murdered one by one with a single pistol, shot to the head in cold blood. The entrance to the cave was dynamited, creating an instant mass grave. The fascist press called that action a “justifiable” German reprisal against Italian terrorists.” Good friends of ours – fathers and brothers of ordinary families – perished without their families knowing what had actually happened. The Nazis disallowed fact finding, and claimed to have killed saboteurs, communists, and terrorists, not teachers, students, doctors, and workers. No, the Nazis were the “good guys” who were punishing “evil” Italian terrorists.

Five years later I arrived by ship to the United States and wept with profound emotion upon seeing the Statue of Liberty. Few people born and raised in a functioning Democracy are able to imagine the depth of the love that I as an immigrant from a fascist state have always felt for America.

My defense of this country, especially when traveling abroad, has never wavered, even with the discrimination I endured here in my youth. I remember being called wap, dago, and other derogatory epithets similar to jap, nigger, and kike, but joked back and reminded these name-calling right wing racists that Italy had contributed substantially to their claims of being civilized. The reason I always defended my adopted country was because I revered its magnificent governing document and the ideals it embodied: the United States Constitution, the greatest promise for human beings to live free under just laws and to pursue happiness in a united and strong nation. Yes, Italy was my childhood cradle but while my love for its culture is as much a part of me as the Jewish culture is a part of any Jew, I would never support a Congress or an Administration that puts the interests of Italy above the interests of the people of the United States.

Fascism on the rise today

Martin Luther King helped move us closer to the time when this promise will blossom into full reality, just as the greed, powerlust and big money corruption of the 2000 elections blocked progress and are pushing us back from freedom into the fascist filth of the past with its ugly exploitation of the poor, use of foreign child labor, and theft of our surplus and treasury behind a propaganda smoke screen of a “War on Terrorism.” I find all the warmongering and sly emotional appeals, the drum beating and flag waving while our Constitution is being thrashed behind our backs, contemptible.

Thousands of American who died to rid Europe of fascism and Nazism are turning over in their graves, realizing in horror that in only 60 years the American people – having become TV-brainwashed – are facing a neo-fascist takeover of their government in broad daylight. A judicial coup financed by a multinational energy Ponzi scheme – ENRON – and by armaments and financial cartels helped by the lobby of a foreign nation, is trying to establish a totalitarian dictatorship to destroy Democracy by contriving a perennial war that may end by plunging us all in a global nuclear catastrophe. Like deer frozen on a highway staring at approaching headlights, the Americans people are confused and helplessly paralyzed.

Meanwhile, Israel’s controlling Zionists have spread their tentacles into the Texas Ranch of the un-American pseudo-leader and are committing errors that retrograde the hard-won Jewish achievements of world acceptance, provoking increasing anti-Jewish feeling and reactions worldwide. No action has been more damaging to the Jewish community than Congress’ pro-Israel measure sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman, which passed with blatant disregard for the immense suffering of the Palestinian people.

The shock of our so-called “Representatives” – oblivious to this nation’s interests – cheering and supporting a foreign country while it is in the act of inflicting the same brutal massacres on the Palestinians as the German’s inflicted on the Jews in WWII, is devastating to what remains of America’s self respect. Bush acting like Sharon’s poodle projects the image of a frightening Evil Empire ruled by a weak madman approving war while blabbering peace, accepting mass murders while spouting Christian compassion, and pretending not to see the crimes committed by his rebellious governor of Palestine, Pontius Pilate (Sharon) foaming at the mouth and telling the weak Texan Caesar to go chase cows on his ranch. But little Caesar is desperately trying to keep his dad’s Saudi Arabian oil partners happy and get some help for revenge against Saddam Hussein. Sharon wouldn’t mind returning favors and assisting in Bush’s planned massacres in Iraq for a share of its oil. Maybe all this will help the Texas Emperor. Quite a juggling act that might blow up like the Venezuelan Bush oil coup.

Having lived in a fascist state I feel a duty to sound out these warnings of impending national disaster. As a citizen of the United States I have the Constitutional right to loudly protest what our unelected administration is doing and expose the negligence of many representatives in our irresponsible Congress. After reading the following astonishing front page statements in our mainstream press, I felt I was back under Mussolini in fascist Italy:

Congress clasped Israel in a warm embrace on Thursday, passing resolutions of support for the Jewish state and blessing its recent military campaign as an attempt at “dismantling the terrorist infrastructure” in Palestinian territory…”Let every terrorist know, the American people will never abandon freedom, democracy or Israel,” said Texas Rep Tom DeLay. “Recent attacks directed against Israelis,” the House GOP whip added, “are attacks against liberty, and all free people must recognize that Israel’s fight is our fight.”

How dare Tom Delay speak for “free people” and how dare this sweat shop promoter utter sacred words like “freedom” and “democracy” and in the same breath support the massacre of Palestinians with weapons funded by the American taxpayer – in arrant violation of laws regarding arms sales to Israel which are to be used for defense purposes only – not to attack, destroy, and murder innocent people.

Cheap accusations

I am sick and tired of hearing cheap accusations of “anti-Semitism” belched helter-skelter, shotgun fashion, against U.S. citizens who dare criticize anything Jewish. If we say we don’t like lox and bagels or can’t stand matzo ball soup, we are called anti-Semitic. Jews who all too easily accuse others of being Anti-Semitic are invariably racist toward other ethnic groups, especially Arabs, who are also Semites! To be anti any one race is to be antihuman.

The Jewish Holocaust was unquestionably a tragedy of epic proportions and Jews are correct to do all they can so the world doesn’t forget, but they, of all people, should not be the ones to imitate or repeat the aggression, torture, imprisonment, or persecution they suffered during those evil times. Unfortunately, it seems that the Israeli government and many American Jews have forgotten or choose to disregard history. Fortunately, not all have fallen to this Nazi level of evil and many are protesting Israel’s heightened aggression.

Sharon is a terrorist beast of old standing who behaves like a Nazi. Now he, like they, is trying to hide evidence of brutal massacres and to prevent an investigation by the UN in collusion with the U.S. Isn’t that why America talks about a summer conference – to give Israel time to conceal its staggering new human holocaust? Mighty Israel and mighty America in self-righteous pursuit of revenge have fallen to the same low level of terrorist actions as those they want to prevent and in so doing fertilize the ground of evil.

If our civilization could see the world as my Jewish friend so eloquently wrote:

“I believe in a spiritual universe that emanates from an ineffably numinous source in which each of us plays an important role” –

then all lives would be sacred: the African, the Caucasian, the Asian, the Polynesian. As human beings each of us can be objective only when we hold no secret presumption of being superior by race, gender, or in any other way. To feel superior because an infantile image of God makes us believe that the Numinous Source, the Infinite Principle that manifested the Universe, is a God so petty as to choose only our tribe above all others – this fanatical interpretation by Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike has been the cause of centuries of evil and injustice.

Only when we understand the irrefragable reality of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all humans will we find the way of peace and the energy and resources to turn this planet back into an abundant Garden.

21st Century socialism is a newborn child with immense promise. It threatens satanic capitalism and therefore needs all the protection good people and their leaders can give it to make a different world possible. Hugo Chavez is the man for this season.

Nobility in defeat

Hugo Chavez may have his own personality defects, like all humans do, however, his stature was greater in defeat than in victory. Conversely, the abysmal depravity of capitalist media by stark contrast made Hugo’s temporary political loss shine as a moral victory and a testament to his democratic honor and statesmanship.

Dante Alighieri’s immortal words:

Qui si parra’ la tua nobilitate! (Here shall your nobility be proven!) –

clearly applied on December 2 to Hugo. Facing alone the perennial struggle for truth, Dante forgave innocent error, but consigned hypocrites and traitors to the deepest circles of hell.

Chavez realized that some of his people did not fully understand the complex referendum (containing over 60 amendments) and that he had not made enough debate and discussion possible on the grassroots level in his enthusiasm to quickly move forward on important social reforms. Venezuelans will now have some time to regroup and launch an even better round of constitutional amendments to open the floodgates to the life saving waters of participatory democracy.

Author Gregory Wilpert, editor of venezuelanalysis.com, which provides objective and accurate information on Venezuela, wrote:

By rushing the reform process Chavez presented the opposition with a nearly unprecedented opportunity to deal him a serious blow. Also, the rush in which the process was pushed forward opened him to criticism that the process was fundamentally flawed, which has become one of the main criticisms of the more moderate critics of the reform.

Chavez, aware of his error, accepted defeat por ahora (for now), signaling that fascist violence and media deception would not have the last word.

Victims of controlled mass media

The deluded, rich and poor alike, are victims of the capitalist system’s controlled mass media. The capitalist global system of unlimited greed and unending brutality can only be branded as satanic. The victims are billions of oppressed, bombed, starved, and destroyed lives all across the planet. Like small fish trapped in a swamp, entire populations are unable to escape the suffocating polluted quagmire in which they are immersed by the powers that be. The people, for lack of information, cannot even begin to realize that this barbarous environment is a barrier deliberately constructed to prevent their access to the abundant waters of life, which nature provides for all. Few realize that this lethal condition is artificially generated by the unrestrained greed and power-lust of a very small minority controlling the system called “capitalism,” which should more realistically be called “satanic capitalism.”

Hugo can take comfort from the example of that expert on satanic forces, the greatest Italian poet, Dante, who was accused of being mentally sick by corrupt lunatics of his time, including Catholic bishops and priests, just as Antonio Gramsci, the Italian socialist, found comfort when he studied, in prison, how Dante turned to his conscious inner-self and asked: Help me now to write what I saw. Here shall thou prove thy spiritual worth.

Like Dante and most great men, Hugo Chavez has been accused of being a power-hungry dictator. Nothing new in this world of hypocrites. Christ, an early socialist, was accused by the evil empire of his time of seeking to be a king because he sought to help the poor. In fact, Christ was a threat to the ruling class, as Chavez is. This writer is confident that Hugo will soon inspire the people to bring a new, even stronger constitutional reform forward to a landslide victory.

In his moment of political defeat, Hugo Chavez proved that Qui si parra’ la tua nobilitate. In fact, the world media continues its chicanery by manufacturing outrageous lies about the reform. For example, just before the referendum, there appeared a cheap, quickly-removed Washington Post article by torture aficionado Donald Rumsfeld, titled: “The Smart Way To Beat Tyrants Like Chavez,” a pathetic barf of lies, like: the free world has too few tools to help prevent Venezuela’s once vibrant democracy from receding into dictatorship. Such malicious lies from a major war criminal in a major U.S. newspaper evidence the disreputable level to which mass media has sunk. For a great rebut to Rumsfeld’s sludge, see Carlos Martinez’ article: “I Thought Dictators Couldn’t Lose Elections!”

Exposing lies and liars

Hugo Chavez exposed sordid sold-out pundits like Rumsfeld with his graceful acceptance of the outcome of the referendum. Hugo said: We will respect the result, whatever it is – even if it’s by one single vote. Venezuela’s electoral system was proven exemplar, efficient, and trustworthy.

For the safety of Venezuela’s democracy, this writer hopes that before the next referendum, strict laws will be established by the National Assembly to ban false information from the public media, on pain of prison and high fines. Freedom must be protected from the poison of misinformation, violence, and fascist deceit.

Prior to the December referendum, the oligarchy’s scaremongers waged a rabid campaign of slander and violence. The pressure was merciless. The mendacity of the Roman Catholic Church, spearheaded by the reactionary Episcopal Conference, must have driven the saints to drink as they heard priests preaching against participative democracy and calling it “godless communism!”

It is in the context of religious politics that capitalism reveals its truly satanic character. Like the Southern Baptists in the U.S. — that snake-pit of fearmongers, deploying battalions of Bible-pounding Christianoid preachers who lip-serve Jesus to foment war, persecute minorities, and suggest the assassination of Hugo Chavez (Pat Robertson) — religionist evil in Venezuela is incarnated by the corrupt Catholic Church and its discredited clergy of neo-fascist pedophiles — those same enemies of Christ who opposed liberation theology in Central and South America. This decadent, anti-Christian church reasserted its historical ill-repute as supporter of oppressors when one of its spokesman was caught on candid camera in front of the holy altar, with Jesus looking down from the cross, promoting violence to oppose the referendum in Venezuela (see the video: “Venezuelan Government Uncovers Destabilization Plan“).

After the result of the referendum was announced, General Baduel, the Judas of the Bolivarian Revolution, offered to negotiate with Chavez and renounced organizing a coup. How kind! Maybe Baduel also agreed to kiss Chavez on the cheek at the right moment for 30 tons of gringo silver to help the sniper already trained for targeting Hugo. Fortunately, Hugo Chavez is no fool. He can smell danger and will never deal with Satan. There can be no collaboration between socialism and capitalism because there can be no justice between oppressors and oppressed.

The revolution must leap forward!

Let citizens march shoulder to shoulder with the military and organize themselves into a strong, well-trained Bolivarian militia to prevent fascist violence, whose vicious head was clearly visible on the streets of Caracas more than once. The people must be ready before conspiring golpistas, emboldened by their mini success, obtain the intervention of foreign imperialists. Never forget that Hitler was financed by American and European capitalists, including members of the Bush family. It is predictable that, sooner or later, fascists will try a bloody, brown-shirt- style takeover. Venezuela must act fast to make its revolution permanent and defensible.

21st Century socialism is a newborn child with immense promise. It threatens satanic capitalism and therefore needs all the protection good people and their leaders can give it to make a different world possible. Hugo Chavez is the man for this season.