Indybay IMC Interviews Al Giordano on Venezuela, the media, and anarchism
http://www.narconews.com/
reporting on the drug war and democracy “from somewhere in a country called América.” That is, the América with an accent, South of the Border.
A former political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, Giordano has also written for The Nation, The Washington Post, American Journalism Review, Evergreen Review, IndyMedia, and scores of other periodicals. He is also a veteran radio, TV, and Internet journalist.
A year ago, Giordano, Narco News, and Mexican journalist Mario Menendez, won a precedent-setting decision from the New York Supreme Court after they were sued by the National Bank of Mexico (Banamex, a subsidiary of Citigroup) for publishing photos and evidence of cocaine trafficking by the bank’s owner. The Court ruled in Giordano's favor, establishing, for the first time, that Internet journalists have the same First Amendment rights as the New York Times under U.S. law. The precedent applies to IndyMedia, too.
The court order appears on the website of the Bay Area's own Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which had filed an amicus brief in defense of Narco News and Giordano:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/BNM_v_Narco_News/20011205_decision.html
When he won that landmark case, Giordano, who was at the time in the Amazon Chapare region of Bolivia investigating the assassination of coca growers' union leader Casimiro Huanca, chose to give his exclusive interview on the Court victory to New York City IndyMedia:
http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14874&group=webcast
The quality of Giordano's journalistic work from Latin America has been praised by many of the leading media critics and journalists in the world:
http://www.narconews.com/mediacritics1.html
He spent part of this year in Venezuela, where he reports he was inspired by that nation's Community Media movement, with 25 Community TV and radio stations that have broken the monopoly of the Commercial Media, to form the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Narco News, widely credited with breaking the information blockade on last April's coup d'etat in Venezuela, is again in the thick of it: A bulwark against the Commercial Media's disinformation on the battles in that Latin American nation of 24 million people. With 120,000 readers a day, Narco News continues to refuse commercial advertising. Giordano owns no property, no house, no car, and no credit card. You can read Narco News' coverage of the Battle of Venezuela, and other reports from Latin America, at:
http://www.narconews.com/
This week, he granted an exclusive interview with San Francisco Bay Area IndyMedia, in part to offer his response to some stories posted on Indybay by a group calling itself “anarchist” regarding the situation in Venezuela. Giordano, as can be seen in his passion for “social anarchism” in this interview, asserts, “The only respectable anarchist position is to fight tooth and nail against these coup attempts.” He also said, “When I have something important to say, I like to grant the interview to IndyMedia, because it is the one place North of the Border where I know my words won't be censored. And SF Bay IMC has been, for the past year, one of the leading lights on breaking the information blockade from Venezuela.”
* * * * *
Indybay: So Al. You're the closest thing we have to a guy on the ground there. We need your input. Care to enlighten us as to what's really happening?
Al Giordano: In fact, we (and that “we” includes IndyMedia) have an enormous network of friends and allies on the ground there who are the ones Venezuelans proudly call Community Journalists. The independent media movement in Venezuela is the most advanced in the hemisphere, probably in the world. There are 25 Community TV and Radio stations in Venezuela, many of which began as "pirate stations," one dating back to the 1960s, that were legalized under the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999. There are movement also includes important print and Internet publications.
The Popular Revolutionary Assembly has one of the best online centers of information I've ever seen at: http://www.aporrea.org It updates every hour or more often for 24 hours a day. In recent days it has been invaluable. Anyone who has been reading the Aporrea site for the past two weeks has witnessed, time and time again, how the people from the grassroots are leading and pushing Chávez to resist the coup, not vice versa.
Indybay: How does their work compare to the corporate media?
Al Giordano: There's something very racist in the reporting of simulators like the British journalist Phil Gunson, a freelance mercenary who has published knowingly false stories recently in Newsweek/MSNBC, the Christian Science Monitor and the daily newspaper of coup-plotters everywhere, the Miami Herald. There's something positively sleazy about this guy and his work. I observed him in action down in Venezuela during a presidential press conference - him and this little clique of boy reporters from England and the U.S., and their snobby superiority complex, who would be more comfortable with Chávez as their gardener than as president of an oil-rich nation of 24 million people.
You can see the frustration on their faces of having to report on this dark-skinned hawk-nosed soldier who is smarter and more popular than they are, and who during a five hour press conference answers all their snotty questions in great detail - Imagine Bush or Gore or Clinton ever doing that! - and he beats them on the facts and they have to call him "president" in their reports. And the press conference itself is broadcast on national TV, and the Venezuelan people get to see just how snotty and clueless the U.S. and European press corps, as a group (because there is always the occasional good one or two in their midst; they know who they are), get completely beaten at their own game by Chávez.
If your sympathies are with the working class, and you distrust the commercial media correspondents as I do, it's great entertainment, and it's part of the educational process underway there. You can see them, these divine caste "reporters," wince as it happens because they know that Chávez is not the buffoon they try to portray him to be. He's smarter than they are. In fact, if anything, he's very suave and smooth, which is why his five-hour live TV shows every Sunday - "Alo Presidente!" - are the most popular or at least one of the most popular programs in the country. Whole families gather every Sunday to watch the show, on which he takes live phone calls.
I could just see the Gunsons and others like him sitting there, thinking to them selves, "if this guy were my gardener or chauffeur, he'd be a lot of fun." Oh, it's a sad thing, what happens to U.S. and British and Spaniard correspondents when they enter lands with oligarchies, because they start to think of themselves as landed gentry. They move into the wealthy neighborhoods and live behind walls, they send their kids to private schools with the other oligarchs, and from that perspective flows their reporting. They also develop very unhealthy parasitic relationships with US and European Embassy, and multinational corporate, spin-doctors. But back to Gunson, because he's got this coming.
Gunson, interviewed last week on NPR, gave an example of this inherent racism and snobbery when he said, and I quote: "I think it's important to point out that last night what we saw was perhaps the worst example so far of something, a phenomenon that we've seen before, which is concerted attacks on different media organizations by mobs that are clearly organized by the government. For example, the mobs in most places were led by deputies, by congresspeople, belonging to the ruling party." Gunson said that, not me. The idea that the people - who Gunson calls "mobs" - would only protest at Commercial TV stations if "organized by the government" has a racist ring to it. He suggests that the people aren't smart enough or organized enough to think of it or do it themselves.
But anyone who has been reading the Aporrea website and following the Community Media coverage in Venezuela, as I do, watched the process in the days before the TV station protests last Monday night, December 9th. For days the popular organizations, from the neighborhoods and towns, were writing open letters to Chávez and the government, demanding that he do something about the constant stream of lies and bile being spread by the Commercial TV stations as the media invented a so-called "strike" that was not happening in the majority of Venezuelan neighborhoods or towns! The people were seeing one portrayal on TV that did not reflect the reality on their streets, where shops were open, where people were working, and working hard, as is another trademark of poor Venezuelans. They have to work hard in order to eat!
I sometimes think these First World reporters have no life experience to understand that reality. For days these community groups had called upon Chávez to revoke the licenses of the simulating TV stations that, after all, do use the "public airwaves" and therefore ought to have public responsibility and be open to all the public, not just the paying class. And Chávez did nothing at all to the TV stations, so the masses came down from the hills and surrounded them, as they had last April. In both cases, in April and in December, the surrounding of the TV stations marked the turning points against coup d'etat. The TV owners cry "intimidation" and the racist simulators like Gunson claim these "mobs" of poor and working people were pushed to do it from above. But the reality is that at all moments they are the ones running the show, pushing the government, pushing Chávez, pushing the media, as the people should do in every land.
Gunson sees some Congressmen and women in these demonstrations and says, from his little pea brain, "aha! they're the ringleaders!" He profoundly misunderstands the dynamic at work in Venezuela. The congress members were dragged by the masses to come with them, not vice versa! If you believe in Authentic Democracy, it's a wonderful process to watch and participate in. The saddest thing of all - and this is where I feel a tinge of pity for Gunson, for T. Christian Miller of the *LA Times*, for Juan Forero of the NY Times and the other professional simulators - is that the correspondents are missing the story of a lifetime because of their upper-class fear of the people.
The real story is going on in the barrios, in the hills, in the poor and working neighborhoods and towns. It is a revolutionary process, sweeping away decades of a caste system and its injustices. It's part of what I think Tony Negri meant when he referred to "self-valorization" in his book "Marx After Marx," so wonderfully formed by the Northern Italian autonomy movement of the 1970s. The first step to economic self-valorization by workers is the process of psychological self-valorization.
Indybay: Since you lack that upper-class fear of the people, you must be privy to the real story. So help us out up here. Tell us what's really happening in the barrios, the hills, and the poor and working neighborhoods and towns. What has changed that has brought about this upheaval.
Al Giordano: What has changed most markedly among Venezuela's poor majority is the same thing that changed among the indigenous communities of Chiapas and much of Mexico beginning in 1994: the people's view of themselves. When I first walked through the popular barrios of Caracas and talked to every stranger in sight my first thought was: "This is just like what I lived in Chiapas."
I had known Chiapas before and after the Zapatista uprising and therefore had a yardstick by which to measure what had occurred. And the same thing has occurred with the masses of Venezuela. They're not available any more to sign up for duty as slaves. And this is what drives the former ruling class crazy. The gardener, the cook, the maid, the nanny, the tutor, the chauffeur, and of course the farmer and factory worker, no longer have to pretend that the master is god.
The self-valorization process in Venezuela - like that in Chiapas - has caused a personality crisis for the upper classes. It's hard to maintain the illusion that one lives on Olympus with the gods - and if you've ever spent any time among the oligarchies in Third World outposts, you know about this attitude I'm describing - when you no longer have adoring minions, or when the plebes stop faking the adoration.
And this is only the first stage of self-valorization; the psychological transformation. Karl Marx (who once cried out “I am not a Marxist!”) and Tony Negri referred more concretely to the economic stage; to the worker as his and her own subject and no longer the object of the ruling elite. Which is why you hear the crazy oligarchs screaming so loudly about the "Bolivarian Circles," because that is the mechanism by which the Venezuelan revolution begins to do what the oligarchs find unforgivable: to organize this new positive self-image among the people into neighborhood and economic entities.
Indybay: What exactly are the Bolivarian Circles?
Al Giordano: To hear the oligarchs and the Commercial Media screech about the Bolivarian Circles, you would think they are armed paramilitary organizations of vampires coming to drink their precious children's blood. I went and spent time with these Circles. Do you what they're really doing? The old guy in every neighborhood who loves the architecture, the history, you know him, these guys even exist in San Francisco and New York, the one who goes and spends hours at the library researching the construction of the local church? Well, this guy is now in the Bolivarian Circle. And for the first time he has an eager audience of children and adults and elders all excited to study and learn the history of their barrio. And the lady who understands herbs and natural medicine is holding very popular workshops and training sessions to help everyone understand it. She's the Bolivarian Circle, too. So is the neighborhood baseball team, and kids who do rap or theater. They're the Bolivarian Circles, too. That's what they are "armed" with: library books, herbal remedies, boomboxes and baseball gloves.
And, you know, the upper classes have a point in their fear of this, which is why the Commercial Media preys on this fear: the family using herbal remedies is no longer spending a week's pay on expensive pharmaceuticals. It's healthy without them. There's a self-led reorganization of the economy from the bottom up. Everything is changing.
So the Commercial Media yelps "Beware! Vampire Bolivarian Circles are coming to kill you!" This is why the most popular chant in Caracas today is "Chávez Makes Them Crazy!" Because the people watch these former ruling class members railing all their fears on TV, and they really do have psychological problems with the loss of their illusory power over others.
Meanwhile, the psychology of the majority has never been healthier or more positive than it is today. The concept of “Psy-war,” thank you, Venezuela and Chiapas, is no longer a strictly top down phenomenon. If there's any gringo reading this who is spending hundreds of dollars on a shrink to cope with the post-9/11 insanity up there, I say, save your money and go to Venezuela, to the popular neighborhoods, you probably just need a good dose of "self-valorization" yourself!
Indybay: How does Community Media fit in?
Al Giordano: Many thousands of people are now involved in Community Media. If only we had this connection with the masses at all the IMCs and other "independent media" in the United States! To me, they are our teachers in how to make independent media popular with the masses, and how to deflate the convocatory power of the corrupt Commercial Media.
For me, as a veteran journalist, I feel like their student: the Venezuela Community Media people have showed us a new way to fight. This is where Phase II of Zapatismo has popped up and been developed. Phase III is coming in Brazil. Narco News will, next year, be making a major move to cover the process in Brazil, too, where the sleeping giant of América has awakened.
Indybay: Neither the Bolivarian Circles nor Community could have arisen in a vacuum, could they?
Al Giordano: You have to look at these things historically, how one process builds on another. We had 13 years of unchallenged globalization and then, surprise!, the Mexican indigenous movement carved out the stage from which to challenge it. And the final chapter of that process has not been written yet. I think 2003 will be a very interesting year in Mexico. The guy with the pipe and the pen is beginning to speak again. Zapatismo, beginning in 1994, caused a ripple all over the world, including in South America.
Consider this: The 1998 election of Chávez in Venezuela would not have been possible without Mexico's Zapatismo. Marcos - with his belts of bullets, his uniform, and often photographed with a gun - showed through his actions and behavior that being a soldier does not always equal being "bad" or authoritarian. His communiqués - remember, it's not just him, he is the talented and humorous pen and voice of a group - over the past eight, coming on nine, years have been the spear of an educational process. Suddenly, four years into that process, in 1998, Chávez pops up with his red beret and uniform in Venezuela and, wham!, in Caracas and other cities we begin to see the manifestation of what Peter Lamborne Wilson predicted, back in 1996, would be an "urban Zapatismo."
Indybay: But this past year has different. Things seem to be coming to a head. What changed?
Al Giordano: This past year, three key things happened:
1. The April coup in Venezuela: It was turned back by urban Zapatismo tactics, led from below, by the masses. Chávez was being held incommunicado at gunpoint by the coup-plotters. And here's the fatal flaw in Gunson's claim that the "mobs" are organized from above. It was during those days in April, while the figurehead of the revolution was cut off from communication, that the masses first surrounded the TV stations and Commercial newspapers - nobody can blame that on Chávez. He was tied up at the moment, probably literally.
For almost 48 hours, nobody, but nobody, in the English language news world except for Narco News was predicting his return to power. All the "experts" - including many left academics - thought it would go the way of Chile 1973. The people - including the primarily poor rank-and-file members of the Armed Forces - literally rose up and by the time he was restored we were living in a new América, healed, finally, from the 29-year-old wound of the 1973 Chile coup.
2. Last October, Brazil - clearly emboldened by this turn of events in neighboring Venezuela - elected Lula da Silva of the Workers Party. Now, Lula is very seasoned. He's been at this for decades. He and his team are as ready to govern as any new president in the hemisphere has been in modern history. He is a man with a plan. How is it that he can, right now, play Bush like a Stradivarius? And he plays the Euro against the Dollar to create spaces for Brazil. And he begins to make, as his first major move, an open play for a joint currency with Argentina. And he doesn't even take office until January!
The seeds of a South American Union are beginning to sprout. It was Chávez in Venezuela who first brought Simón BolÌvar's dream of a united Latin America back into the datasphere, the international public discourse, as a possibility. And the globalized economic forces, led by Washington and Wall Street, have placed him and Venezuela under a savage attack.
In order for Lula and Brazil to have the elbow-room to concretize this process, the Venezuela process must survive. What do you think will happen if Chávez is toppled by coup - whether military coup or economic coup or media coup (by coup I mean a non-democratic imposed solution that doesn't come from the Venezuelan masses) - from outside or above? Lula and Brazil will begin to have to absorb all the attacks that currently go toward Chávez and Venezuela. The Brazilian process is only possible because Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela survive. If the forces of money and power from above blast through Venezuela, they'll march straight into Brazil and again in Argentina and everywhere else. That is what is at stake here.
3. The third big event of 2002 was November's "surprise" election of Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador. Again, the positive military symbol, exorcising, like Marcos and Chávez before him, the ghosts of the military juntas of the late 20th century. And as with the processes in a straight line from Chiapas to Venezuela to Brazil to Ecuador, we see a very strong indigenous component at every step, and increased coherency as it builds.
Indybay: I like your version of the events, Al. Not being on the ground there myself, I have to rely on what I hear. So far, of all of them, you sound the most trustworthy and clearheaded. Thanks. I needed that.
Perhaps you would also permit me to avail myself of your technical expertise as a professional journalist. recently this:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1550624_comment.php#1550723
appeared on the A-INFOS listserv. Personally, I'm skeptical, if only because I've never heard of these people before, and there are an awful lot of faux anarchists out there. What do you think?
Al Giordano: Somebody claims to be an "anarchist" and we have to take them seriously? What have they ever done? Frankly, I find it offensive, since I am one of many who have paid a price again and again and again for being a true-to-life anarcho-syndicalist of strong Situationist tendencies. But I've gone to jail for it. I've been sued for it. I've lost jobs because of it.
This "libertario" group is nothing more than a few dilettantes who have never accomplished anything. Serious revolutionaries and anarchists down here laugh at them, and suspect their motives. I don't think this group is showing any leadership, intelligence, or analysis, at this hour of moral crisis and I can't help but wonder about their motives.
If you're in the White House "situation room" and watching your coup in Venezuela fall apart, in part because of actions on IndyMedia like the hundreds of signatures adding up on DC IndyMedia against the Bush coup plot, what do you do? If you're the White House, and you've failed to divide the left from the right, you try to divide it from the left. Don't you? It seems very transparent to me.
If you'll recall, the same kind of group pops up from time to time to attack the Zapatistas in Mexico. It's a standard element of disinfo campaigns. It pisses me off, too. How dare these non-entities use the word "anarchist" to try and divide us on a basic issue: Are we for a coup d'etat or not? Once one makes the decision that, no, we're not for a coup d'etat, whatever differences in shades we have with the elected government - and of course you, I, and most other people have differences with any government! - become irrelevant.
The issue right now is the coup: yes or no. I distrust protagonists like those in this libertarios group who want to confuse people right now. In many ways, they are worse than the overt coup-mongers, because they are less honest about their true agenda. And I say that as one who has, in the battles among tendencies, always sided with the true anarchists against the statist. But that is not the issue at hand in Venezuela today.
Indybay: So you don't think that post was constructive?
Al Giordano: I think the post by these so-called "anarchists," and their timing, is a cowardly act of aggression against the progress of all Latin American social movements right now. If Venezuela falls to a U.S. coup, it's going to turn the clock back 30 years in the entire hemisphere. We'll be right back in Santiago de Chile, September 11, 1973. Pinochet rounded up and shot all the anarchists, too, you know. Remember that the Chile coup led to Operation Condor and military dictatorship terror in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and Bolivia among other places. The cancer spread all the way to Mexico. THAT is what is being attempted right now. The people whining about Chávez today are like those who whined about Allende in the early 70s . . . he wasn't politically perfect enough for them. Well, look what they got. Chile 1973 wasn't about Allende, and Venezuela 2002-2003 is not about Chávez. It's the entire social process in all América that rides on this one.
Indybay: Just as there are more than one kind of so-called anarchists, there are more than one kind of real anarchist. Personally, I don't think every faction grasps current events with the same degree of clarity. What's your take on that?
Al Giordano: If you put aside some of the personal bile in Murray Bookchin's dialectic of "lifestyle anarchism" vs. "social anarchism," he in fact made a very good point. There is this kind of incoherent version of anarchism that relates more to punk rock (and I like punk rock, but that is an aesthetic, not a political, taste), nose rings, dyed hair and other superficial fashion statements than it does to Workers Councils or Bolivarian Circles.
I mean, I recently got an email from a colleague, the economic libertarian Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam who addressed me as "fellow anarchist." And Alex of course was joking because he's not an anarchist and certainly not an anarcho-syndicalist. The word “anarchist” is often poorly used. Some other prominent left intellectuals have gotten into problems by trying to define themselves as anarchists but then backing away from the term. I don't back away from it. I am an anarchist, and it goes way beyond my lifestyle - which, as Flores Magón said, "The true revolutionary is an illegal par excellence. The man who adjusts his actions to the Law can be, in the end, a good domesticated animal; but not a revolutionary" - and I guess after 27 arrests, various border problems and getting my ass sued by billionaire narco-bankers I feel very much a Magonista. You know, he was an Authentic Journalist, too.
But anarchist thought and action have to confront the single biggest shift of our times in State Power. State Power has shifted from governments to economic institutions. I addressed this on page one of my 1997 work, "The Medium is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media." I said, basically, that Media has become The State. It has supplanted Churches, Governments and even Productive Industry as Tyrant Number One on this earth. After five years of keeping that document off the Internet, I finally broke down and published it last year on Narco News:
http://www.narconews.com/themedium1.html
And it was the masses in Venezuela surrounding the TV stations that convinced me to do that, and also to add some footnotes with some changes in my thinking, the major one being that the only solution right now to this tyranny of media and economic power is a class struggle from below. The thoughtful anarchist might not use the same words as I do, and that's just fine, we're pluralists, but she and he does recognize that "The State" is today in a different form than simply "Government." Globalization is The State. Money is The State. Commercial Media is this larger, more powerful, form of The State's number one police force. So the entity that previously was "The State," the governments of formerly sovereign countries, are now subsidiaries of that global State.
And, yes, governments are always horrible. They can't help themselves, it is in their genetic coding. And at this crucial juncture, some confused "lifestyle anarchists" who are still stuck in this outmoded view of where State Power really lies, can't understand that in the larger war against this Globalized Media-Economic Beast that is conquesting all life on earth at great expense for the majority of people, The State has morphed into a much meaner and more powerful global entity.
Indybay: I don't think it's just "life style anarchists" who misunderstand where the real power lies on this planet. A lot of "social anarchists" also have trouble seeing the strings on which the governments dance. And a lot of what passes for "life style anarchism" isn't even anarchism, even when practiced by otherwise real anarchists. It's nothing but subcultural chauvinism. It stems from pride, a mind clouding emotion, and not from the cold, clear logic of rational analysis.
Other people, myself for one, say that the dichotomy between "life style anarchism" and "social anarchism" is a false one in that it is self imposed unnecessarily. We can go beyond "life style anarchism" without leaving it behind, much as we can go beyond "anarchist syndicalism" without leaving it behind either. We must build on our past, not discard it arbitrarily. What do you think? Can modern anarchists retain our culture(s), of which we are justly proud, and still grow as internationalists to the point where our political analysis is consistent with the undeniable facts on the ground? Can we synthesize what we know already with what we are learning today? Or is the best we can come up with is a handful of bohemian enclaves, scattered across the globe?
Al Giordano: Hakim Bey was, I think, very unfairly labeled a "lifestyle anarchist" by Bookchin. That was very sad, because it personalized and cheapened what was otherwise a very solid dialectic - "lifestyle anarchism" vs. "social anarchism" - put forward by Bookchin. Unfortunately, as ever, personal rivalry got in the way of a cleaner analysis. But in the late 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote an essay - I'm sorry, I don't have it here in my nomadic newsroom, I've lost or given away almost every book I've ever read - I think it was in the last chapter of his book *Millennium*, published by Autonomedia. And in that essay, Hakim Bey surprised a lot of people by pointing out a great truth: that in an age when the State has become this global economic machine, previous enemies - religions and governments, among them - may become tools that can be used against this larger State.
I don't expect any interlocutor to be a Saint or perfect. I like to find the truth from whomever states it, the part of what they say that rings true to me, or that helps me understand the situation better. And Bookchin's analysis helped me to understand a frustration I have with a certain type of person who calls himself or herself an anarchist but ends up being a sap for the ruling class.
When I used to volunteer at Blackout Books, the late anarchist bookstore on New York's Lower East Side, I was shocked to find that most of the people who came to committee meetings had not read the books on the shelves! I basically volunteered there so I could read the books for free. I had no money, no job, I've never owned property, I had left the Boston Phoenix, had left journalism, and was trying to understand and put words to my instinctual revulsion at what had happened to journalism in my lifetime. For me, it was like going back to school.
One of the works that definitely changed my way of thinking was part of Sylvere Lotringer's Semiotext(e) series: "Nomadology: The War Machine," by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Later, when my girlfriend's patience ran out and I was homeless and jobless with $800 to my name and headed to Chiapas, the thinking in that book was crucial to helping me understand the Zapatistas. "The war machine," said Deleuze and Guattari, "is exterior to the State apparatus."
Indybay: What, exactly, can anarchists learn from the Zapatistas?
Al Giordano: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is a “war machine.” It doesn't call itself anarchist, but as many good anarchists have observed, it has very strong anarchist tendencies. At the same time, the Zapatistas speak of "nation" and carry the Mexican flag. Their major battle of 2001 was on behalf of an Indigenous Rights Law. Despite the inherent contradictions, this does not generally upset the lifestyle anarchists. They still have their Marcos tee shirts. And good.
Indybay: That's Marcos. What about Chávez?
Al Giordano: Chávez makes some of these people uncomfortable, especially when he has taunted the former ruling class by calling them "anarchists," some self-described anarchists have claimed (I think they are incorrect in thinking it's about them; they're not exactly at center stage in Venezuela) that this was an attack on "anarchists." There is also (at least in this Libertario magazine bunch) a transparent willingness to play along with the former ruling class game. They pop up at moments like this to get attention for themselves and destabilize the situation.
Hey, when the battle is joined, in times of crisis, people really show their true colors. Remember that in Spain the anarchists fought against fascism. They didn't claim neutrality during an hour of moral crisis! I have read the "analysis" that this group claims to offer. It's quite rote. They claim to offer reporting on what is going on in Venezuela, but they're not reporting any news. They just complain. Somebody called them "beautiful losers." I'd say that shoe fits.
And the arguments they use against Chávez could be used against Marcos and the Zapatistas, too: use of uniforms, national flags, appeals to government. But the Zapatistas don't upset these types because, well, the neoliberals are still in power in Mexico. These types of "lifestyle anarchists" get most upset about one thing: Winning. That Chávez has won, that he is popular, that really bothers them. They are positively insulting toward the poor, toward the masses. One professor affiliated with them wrote to me his view that the poor of Venezuela had no real political development or consciousness. Huh? Has he left his office lately?
Indybay: Are you saying that, win or lose, Chávez is being driven from below, by the ordinary working people themselves, that the Bolivarian Circles are the wave that is sweeping society, and Chávez is surfing it?
Al Giordano: The Bolivarian Circles are very similar to the Workers Councils of Paris 1968. There's also a Situationist tendency in some of what we see in the Venezuelan revolution. One of my best writers recently put that word, revolution, in quotation marks, but I don't. The surrounding of the TV stations, the confrontation with "the spectacle," Chávez's own willingness to confront the corrupt Commercial Media and legalize Community TV and radio, these things are showing the entire world a way out of this media mess. I love it.
None of this means I think that a Chávez government or a Lula government or a Lucio government or any other government is all honey over cornflakes. But the insistence that any movement be "perfect" or "correct" is the quickest route to a permanent state of defeat. What we've seen in Venezuela is that the government (the classic concept of the state) has taken very key actions, like legalizing Community Media as a Constitutional right, and smashing to bits the previous corrupt two-party system, has opened a space for more anarcho-syndicalist and self-valorized activity to gain a foothold in society, where previously it had none.
And this is the change that will outlast the Chávez government. Even the "squalid ones," the former ruling class, admits this over and over again in its discourse: that the damage is already done and every month that goes by and these tendencies (non-governmental tendencies, popular and cultural tendencies) grow, the door slams on tyranny from establishing a foothold ever again.
Indybay: When I see the army occupying police stations to keep the police off the backs of the people, I can't help but wonder. It's a fairly mind boggling sight, for a gringo, anyway. How do Venezuelan feel about that?
Al Giordano: Today, in Venezuela, the uniformed Armed Forces build housing and infrastructure. It's interesting; one of the key demands of the “opposition” is to prohibit the army from building houses! The poor cheer when the military enters their neighborhoods, because they're usually coming to build some houses. Not, like before, when they came to round up the dissidents and repress the social movements.
Chávez's reform of the military, his purge of the "School of the Americas" trained coup-plotters, his opening the spaces for Community TV and radio, his political movement's creation of and support for the Bolivarian Circles, this, no one can deny, is a revolution by any standard. I'm not going to hold it against him or them that they did it via an electoral path. To the contrary, the Venezuelan "war machine" has drawn a new map for how to navigate government power to fight the larger global State. In April, the battle forever changed the military. In December, the battle forever changed the oil apparatus and economic structure. Next up: the revolution in Media.
So when Washington or Wall Street or the multinational oil companies come, as they do this month, to destroy this process, there is no neutral ground for the serious social anarchist. One either fights against the coup, or is part of it. The only respectable anarchist position is to fight tooth and nail against these coup attempts. Who was it that said, "the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral at times of moral crisis." People who sit on the sidelines today, make themselves deservedly irrelevant tomorrow. I don't want to share a foxhole with people like that. I say to them, "see ya across the barricades. I'll be on the side with the masses."
What is going on in Venezuela should be the tip of the iceberg of the social revolution we are seeing in Latin America.
Hopefully Chavez will prevail among those media and foreign sharks!
Nessie's interview is pretty interesting, although it sucks whenever good anarchists bring up the lifestylism bullshit. Al characterizes lifestylism as being punk rock and noserings. Fair enough, but this label has also been used against all anarchists who don't fit a narrow definition of anarchism that a few anarchists believe in.
Hey dude, why don't you shove this up your little ass. I have no idea who El Libertario is and was unaware of any concern about them until I read this interview. Don't get your knickers in a knot thinking that everything posted to Infoshop meet with my approval. Infoshop is a buletin board and resource center for ALL anarchists. Insinuating that I approve of the content of every fucking post on Infoshop is like saying that librarians agree with everything in a library.
Perhaps when genuine revolution looms on the horizon, real revolutionaries set aside some of their idealizations for the chance to participate in the REAL THING.
Assuming Chavez "wins", what happens THEN will determine IF this is the REAL THING.
redstar2000
It's kinda hard to have this both ways... hammer him for being a "censor", and then hammer him for not practicing censorship.
Look folks. Either you believe in what your doing and think it's a solid strategy or you don't. If you do believe in it then having money is a good idea. It takes us further along the path of victory. If on the other had we don't believe what we're doing might actually lead to our intended ends, then we shouldn't take the money. But we also shouldn't be taking those actions.
The real question is, do we think our actions will bring about the results we want. Because if we think that our protests and organizing will just end up benefiting Soros, Stiglitz, and others who want a kinder-gentler capitalist globalization, then we're doing something wrong.
Getting back to the LA imc, how exactly do you think the money was used poorly? Perhaps you object to some statement in the documentary piece they produced "Anarchy in LA?" I mean, the video does have in depth interviews with a number of LA anarchists talking about who they are and what anarchism is. Or perhaps you object to them being able to start the web/pirate radio station KillRadio.
Perhaps you think they let the money influence them in to covering the more reformist countersummmit. But I’m wondering, why if they were bribed in to covering the reformists did I see more coverage of the north american anarchist conference which had much smaller attendance?
Let's be real folks. We need resources to win. That is what Chavez got when he took the state through elections. Now I don't agree with his tactics, I do have to admit he has done what it takes to get and retain the resources necessary to defend the revolution. This includes having the Bolivarian circles, but also community and public media networks, the military, and oil money.
I don't agree with Al's statement that the EZLN and Bolivarian revolution have similar goals. The EZLN clearly states that they are not interested in taking the power of the state, but rather dissolving or transforming that power. Where as Chavez has taken and is wielding the power. This is the critical difference for why anarchists are much more willing to back the EZLN.
I was talking to another anarchist today who explained to me that the U.S. has pushed back its Iraq plans because of the Venezuelan situation. The U.S. doesn't want to risk destabilizing the world oil market by invading Iraq while the oil is turned off in Venezuela.
It's important to defeat the U.S. plans for Venezuela. We need to organize opposition to this here in the states. In the meantime, we should support the rights of working Venezuelans to self-determination and non-interference from the USA.
Here are some others: the EZLN bases are sitting on untapped oil reserves. One of the big fights over the indigenous autonomy law is whether the indigenous can control the "use of the subsoil" - oil.
US activists don't always see the subtleties. The zapatistas came after 6 decades of one party rule. They said smash that state by not seizing power. The bolivarianos and Chavez came after decades of a more US modeled two-party charade. They said smash the state by replacing it. Both did the smart thing given those contexts - smashed the systems that existed to make room for something new.
I wonder what all the South and Central Americans will think of us anarchists in the US after reading these comments. And they WILL read them - this is linked from narconews.com, and my impression is that with all the Spanish articles it has a big readership there, too.
They seem to be always looking for the commonalities and we always seem to be looking for the differences.
They seem to have a prayer. Where are we? What are we doing? Maybe we should be more like them!!!!!
while working, I was listening to mainstream KGO radio, which is a talk station that has a mix of right and left wing. Their left winger Bernie ward (their person on at 4am has some better callers) is a democrat. yesterday he was repeating the most simple portrayal of Venezuela that you heard on mainstream news that there is a 'general strike' going on there because the 'people' are rebelling against him.
That must be what he meant by lifestyle anarchists. - when the battle is raging, they want to debate process and settle old scores that nobody, but nobody, but nobody but the individuals involved cares about. But what about Venezuela?
The rest of your problems I don't know, I don't care, please don't tell me, and it doesn't matter anyway. Tell me more about Venezuela, about beating the media, please. Great interview. But so far not matched by the discussion.
Turning the Tide is a grassroots anti-racist and anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian newspaper that has been publishing for 15 years without any grants, subsidies, foundation money, tax funds, partisan backing. Getting on the hind teat of the system is the kiss of death. We distribute 10,000 copies of the paper quarterly, mostly for free, relying on a number of readers to "subscribe" and keep it publishing. Indymedia in LA or elsewhere needs to depend on the original listener sponsorship model pioneered by Pacifica -- Soros' s money is fool's gold -- or worse, a poisonous fix.
Because in so many cases, anarchists are ruining the chance for political change, not helping it.
If you can throw money at someone who will destabilize the democratic party in a big way, while you know the RNC protest is underfunded? get it?
next, you fund liberal anarchists who denounce the more liberal but possibly-close-to-achieving-a-goal and you are doing even better.
most anarchist activists in the us have a very liberal take on things, compared to communists especially.
I respectfully suggest that this is - or should be - a very big deal for anarchists or Democrats or Independent Media journalists or serious change agents on any number of fronts with in the United States.
I'm somewhat baffled that this is not what is on some commentors' minds here... You're making me remember my motives for heading to Latin America in the first place!
Let's take a little tour of today's and recent news reports...
From today's Boston Globe...
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/355/nation/Oil_workers_Chavez_foes_protestP.shtml
By Marion Lloyd, Globe correspondent
Excerpt:
"Chavez's opponents accuse him of trying to remake this conservative South American nation in the image of communist-run Cuba. They point to Chavez's close ties to President Fidel Castro of Cuba, his increasingly leftist rhetoric, and his creation of neighborhood watchdog groups modeled on Cuba's Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.
"Chavez opponents accuse the groups - called Boliviariano Circles after the South American independence leader, Simon Bolivar - of inciting violence during protest rallies, including the bloody clashes in April that killed 19 people...
"Other Chavez opponents who were pushing for the president's ouster said they might be grateful to him for some things if they could get him to step down.
''He's taught us something good,'' said Pablo Bulka, 45, who estimated he has lost 50 percent of his income selling cell-phone cases since Chavez took office.
''People have last names of the rich, and their pockets are poor,'' he said, sipping red wine and eating imported sausages with fellow Chavez opponents in the garden of a luxury condominium in east Caracas. ''But in the end, we will all have to learn to share.''
Al comments:
In this story above, the debate over the Bolivarian Circles swirls with no correction of the false picture painted of them.
You also have, interestingly in this Boston Globe stories and others, an increasing discussion of class struggle of the sort that almost never happens in US newspapers. Lloyd reports these "opposition" people complaining while they drink red wine and eat imported sausages. Do you know how hard it is to get imported suasages in Caracas, especially right now? And how expensive they are?
I'd like to be out celebrating the holidaze too. But instead I'm stuck here at my post. I could use some help, frankly, in monitoring the US and English-language media coverage. Most of these correspondents have heard from me already - some subscribe to Narco News, and their coverage has improved although still needs much improvement. Others aren't going to change their simulator tune until they hear from various people - perhaps yourselves? - and know they are under the microscope.
There is a huge need right now - by right now, I mean this weekend - to hold the US correspondents' feet to the fire, especially because for the first time in years the taboo C-Word - class struggle - is entering into their reports.
If you snooze through this one, folks, your space to raise these matters within the United States in the future will be more limited. If you punch this through to another level now, your space to operate will expand.
I wish I had better words to describe the opportunities being apparently missed right now by people, including anarchists, North of the Border, as for the first time in memory "our" issues are being discussed and raised. We need warriors right now more than debators.
Moving on to today's predictable AP blast, this from a daily in San Francisco...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/12/21/international0353EST0453.DTL
Venezuela's media war: Opposition versus government TV
By CARLA SALAZAR, Associated Press Writer
Excerpt:
"We've had to make the content more informative and open up more space for reporting, simply as a defense process," Victor Ferreres, president of Venevision, said at a news conference with foreign correspondents this week.
"Ferreres denounced assaults against the media by "Bolivarian Circles," neighborhood groups sworn to defend Chavez's revolution. He accused "Chavistas," as the president's supporters are called, of intimidating journalists, reporters and television camera crews.
"Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, denies his supporters are responsible for media aggression. He claims the circles are helping him improve social conditions for the country's poor majority."
Al Comments:
Again, we see tremendous simulation and inaccuracy in the fear-mongering "reporting" about Bolivarian Circles from AP. That story is already in hundreds of newspapers and being parroted on TV and radio news throughout the U.S.
Moving on to USA Today - at very least you can "rate" this story on Yahoo News! - at this link - costing you a few short seconds of time to express your disapproval...
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E12622AD2
By Elliot Blair Smith
Excerpt:
"The president's supporters come from working-class neighborhoods. Uneducated youths gravitate toward his macho image: the young lieutenant colonel who led a failed coup in 1992 and re-emerged a few years later as a politician who delighted in berating Venezuela's oligarchic managerial class and their patrons in the USA.
Today, jaunty street toughs with pistols patrol the street in paramilitary groups they call ''Bolivarian Circles.'' They took their name from 19th-century leader Simon Bolivar, who liberated Venezuela from Spain. Bolivar also is one of Chavez's favorite role models. ''It's class war,'' said Diana Perez, 19, standing with friends on a street corner in a poor neighborhood on the west side of Caracas.
Al comments:
"It's class war" reports USA Today - with a large readership especially today because so many people are in Airports and Hotels where the McPaper is handed out like candy.
The Venezuelan class war has even reached USA Today! Where are the United States class warriors to seize the moment?
USA Today continues:
*"The opposition is led by business executives, union leaders and provincial governors who have spent the past two weeks lodged in a fancy Caracas hotel where rooms cost $275 a day. Manning the opposition's barricades in city streets are well-dressed representatives of the middle class, who in recent years have become as desperate and radicalized as their working-class counterparts."
Al Comments:
The rest of Blair's article is shit. But that, again, the "class war" and the Bolivarian Circles are being addressed and attacked, instead of ignored, opens up a huge flank for us.
As I often say, we either make immediate history or we are made by it.
Moving on to this week's right-wing National Review, we get an idea of what that faction wants to see happen... THEY'RE paying attention...
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-osorio121902.asp
Ivan G. Osorio in National Review
"But the caudillo (Chavez) enjoys a cult-like following among a minority that is not only fanatical but violent — as the shootings that precipitated Chavez's brief April ouster and that occurred again recently in Caracas demonstrate. The April 11 revolt was a golden opportunity to restore democracy in Venezuela without violence because it happened so quickly that it gave Chavez's thugs little time to react. But recognition for (coup leader) Carmona never came.
"Some would have decried recognizing Carmona's transitional government as a case of American hegemonic bullying of a Latin American country, but that is hardly the case. As a sovereign nation, the United States has the choice of which governments to recognize. Exercising this choice will bring a new moral weight to American diplomacy by emphasizing the importance of the rule of law. Extending or refusing recognition will not necessarily replace hostile governments with friendly ones, but it can let the opposition — and the tyrants — in those countries know whose side we're on.
"Fedecamaras and the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation, the country's largest labor-union federation, who jointly called the April 9 general strike that led to the April 11 rally and Chavez's brief departure, also called the current one. Chavez has indicated he will cling on to power no matter what. And his "Bolivarian circles," armed gangs modeled after his hero Fidel Castro's infamous Revolutionary Defense Committees, have begun reprisals. This time, we must show the Venezuelan people we are on their side.
"Venezuelans know their country has no rule of law. It's time the rest of the world realized it and got behind them. Breaking relations with Chavez's tyrannical regime would be a good start."
"Ivan Osorio is editorial director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He holds a Master's degree in Latin American history from the University of Florida. The views expressed here are his own. "
Al comments:
So we can see where the right wing is at, not just from the National Review, but also from that freakazoid Juan Forero of the NY Times today, who writes...
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I4F621AD2
A Top General Still Stands Behind Chávez
By JUAN FORERO
"CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 20 — The telephone calls have come by the dozens, from leaders of the antigovernment movement, ordinary Venezuelans and even a couple of military officers, all pleading with Gen. Raúl Baduel for his help in removing President Hugo Chávez from power.
"But General Baduel, commander of Venezuela's most important division and the general most responsible for ensuring Mr. Chávez's hold on the presidency, has rejected the requests.
"There have been calls and propositions, even from high levels, of an economic nature that at this point have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars," General Baduel, a 26-year army veteran, told a group of foreign reporters on Thursday at his office in the city of Maracay.
"The general said government foes wanted him to put pressure on the president so that he "understands that he has to resolve this situation by resigning."
As a punishing national strike continues into its 19th day, rumors of a possible coup against the left-leaning president abound. After all, he was briefly deposed in April when high-ranking military officers — who had been holding secret meetings with opposition figures — withdrew their support for the government in the wake of street violence...
"The president is counting on generals like General Baduel, 47, who has been his friend since the early 1970's and was the most visible officer to remain loyal to him when he was removed from power on April 12.
General Baduel, then a brigadier general and commander of a paratrooper brigade, has since been promoted to head the 12,000-man Fourth Armored Division, which has troops in seven states. Five of seven other high-ranking officers who joined him in supporting the president in April were also promoted to important posts, including commands of the army and navy.
"At Plaza Altamira, a public square in an affluent section of Caracas that has become the center of antigovernment activity, generals and admirals who withdrew support for Mr. Chávez in April rail against him daily. Privately, they urge their former colleagues to join them, hoping to split the military and weaken the government. But they also acknowledge that the president has strengthened his hold.
"He took us out of our key jobs in the armed forces, and he put in people close to his ideology," lamented Gen. Carlos Alfonzo, the former second in command of the National Guard. "Every day that passes, he is gaining more space in the armed forces."
Al Comments:
I heard from Barry Crimmins early this morning - a North American with a Latin American work ethic during times of moral crisis - who is preparing a response to Forero.
I'm sure it will be posted at http://www.barrycrimmins.com
Thanks, Barry!
Finally, Scott Wilson of the Washington post weighs in this morning...
Venezuelan Opposition Solicits Key Officers
Payments Offered To Topple Chavez
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 21, 2002; Page A01
MARACAY, Venezuela -- As gasoline, food and patience run low in Venezuela's punishing 19-day-old national strike, President Hugo Chavez's most ardent political opponents have begun making private appeals to key military officers for help in toppling his four-year-old government, the officers said.
The discreet contacts with military officers, pressing them to intervene, represent a significant shift for civilian opposition leaders. Since the current strike began, they have called for the military to stand back and allow the political standoff to be settled through negotiations. And in public, that hasn't changed.
The private approaches to officers were apparently spurred by the failure of massive street demonstrations and a paralyzing oil strike to persuade the twice-elected Chavez to resign or accept early elections. With the threat of violence and food shortages rising, one high-ranking general said he has been offered "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to move against Chavez and bring an end to the crisis.
The appeals are likely to have little effect without a strong burst of fresh violence or more extreme economic chaos, according to active duty and dissident military officers, as well as political analysts here. Since April, when he was briefly ousted in a coup led by a group of generals and admirals, only to return a few days later, Chavez has purged nearly half the senior officer corps, placed longtime friends and allies in key combat and intelligence commands and spent more time with troops and in military academies explaining his political program.
"Those who came forward against him in April and expressed themselves as opponents have been retired, and that dealt with quite a few of them, some of whom were the true leaders of their respective branches," said Anibal Romero, a professor specializing in military affairs at Simon Bolivar University. "He has also done his homework on indoctrination. He has, it seems, been able to convince some younger officers that he is fighting for the poor, against corruption and the rest of what he proclaims."
In this garrison town 90 miles west of Caracas, the capital, those changes have solidified Chavez's grip on the army's Fourth Armored Division, the country's biggest and best-equipped combat unit. It was within this 12,000-member unit that a "counter-coup" emerged two days after Chavez was removed on April 11, raising the threat of troop-against-troop violence and collapsing the interim government put into place by the coup leaders.
Of the eight senior officers who led the counter-coup, two died days later in a helicopter accident. The remaining six have been named to such key posts as commander of the army, commander of the navy, director of military intelligence, the navy's inspector general and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Gen. Raul Baduel, a Tao-practicing paratrooper who was the first senior officer to declare himself against the coup, was named commander of the Fourth Armored Division.
Taken together, those appointments and other changes Chavez has made in smaller infantry and armored units critical to any coup have strengthened his hold over the military's most important elements as he strives to ride out this latest challenge to his rule.
In recent weeks, Baduel said he has received "hundreds of calls," including some from dissident generals and members of the civilian opposition, urging him to act. He said one dissident general called him before the strike began and said that "there would be many deaths" over the course of the protest.
"There have been calls, even propositions from a very high level of an economic nature, that at this point have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that I, to put it elegantly, would intervene with the president so that the president understands he has to resolve the situation with his resignation," Baduel said in an interview, as Gregorian chants and incense smoke wafted through his office,
Reflecting the delicacy of the issue in a country still embarrassed by April's abortive coup, Carlos Fernandez, president of the country's largest business federation and a leader of the civilian opposition group known as the Democratic Coordinator, denied that anyone from the group had called Baduel, at least not with authorization. "We have approved nothing like this," Fernandez said. "We are not involved in that at all."
Chavez's grip on the military represents his most important defense against a future coup as Venezuela, after a year of intense political conflict, continues a slow descent into economic turmoil and street unrest. "I don't have big worries [about the military]," Chavez said in a recent interview, "but, yes, I have worries because of the psychological campaign" he says is being conducted against him by the opposition-controlled media.
On December 17th, the Post’s Wilson wrote:
In tearing down old institutions, Chavez has also built new ones. The government-sponsored Bolivarian Circles, supposedly small neighborhood advocacy groups, have emerged as the vanguard of pro-Chavez forces in the streets and are highly distrusted by the opposition.
Al Comments:
Again, we hear about Bolivarian Circles.
If you let the Commercial Media define this anarcho-syndicalist phenomenon of Bolivarian Circles today, your own abilities to form similar movements in the future will be greatly limited.
Don't let the mercenary commercial press define the debate. Get into the fight as it is happening!
salud y abrazo,
Al Giordano
-- Nat Hentoff. Resistance Rising! True Patriots Networking. Village Voice, November 22nd, 2002.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0248/hentoff.php and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction/message/610 and
http://www.bordc.org Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Modern-day group.
"Perhaps no single step contributed so much to cement the union of the colonies, and the final acquisition of independence, as the establishment of committees of correspondence. This supported a chain of communication from New Hampshire to Georgia that produced unanimity and energy throughout the continent."
-- Mercy Otis Warren. History of the Rise and Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Book published in 1805. She (Mercy) was an "historian, playwright, and political pamphleteer."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0248/hentoff.php and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction/message/610
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude greater than
the animating contest for freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We seek not your counsel, nor your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget
that ye were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
*Quotes. Corporatism.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/corporatism.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/corporatism.htm
*Quotes. Revolutionary.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/change.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/change.htm
*Terrorism of USA. Death Squads, Drug War. LINKS worldwide. Revised. Millions killed over decades. Mostly US-run or US-aided terrorist death squads worldwide. Other death squads, too. Today's death squads, and older ones such as the US-run Phoenix Program during the Vietnam war. Terrorism and corruption at all levels of politics, police, society, media, business, unions, government, etc.. Lists in alphabetical and chronological order. Huge LINKS list.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/squads.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/squads.htm
I appreciate your courageous quest for the truth and your willingness to endure great personal sacrifices to enlighten others!
For me I have found the act of turning off the television to be a deeply liberating act, an act which promotes self-valorization, if you will.
Fidel?
-- Nat Hentoff. Resistance Rising! True Patriots Networking. Village Voice, November 22nd, 2002.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0248/hentoff.php and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction/message/610 and
http://www.bordc.org Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Modern-day group.
"Perhaps no single step contributed so much to cement the union of the colonies, and the final acquisition of independence, as the establishment of committees of correspondence. This supported a chain of communication from New Hampshire to Georgia that produced unanimity and energy throughout the continent."
-- Mercy Otis Warren. History of the Rise and Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Book published in 1805. She (Mercy) was an "historian, playwright, and political pamphleteer."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0248/hentoff.php and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction/message/610
What is this B.S. trying to link these so-called "Bill of Rights Defense Committees" to the Bolivarian Circles?
This seems like a feeble attempt by one of these American "Patriot" organization to pimp off the success of the Bolivarian revolution in order to advance their own agenda here in the USA.
Unfortunately, what this guy neglects to consider is the fact that the American Con-stitution has nothing to do with protecting anybody's rights. IF you want proof, go ask all of those Muslims and ARab immigrants who have been detained and imprisoned by the USA recently.
Contrary to all the Nationalist propaganda which informs American mythology about itself, the American "Revolution" and Constitution where produced by, about, and for the White Propertied class of American Colonists who wanted to be free from the British Empire--in order to created their own American Empire, based upon the genocide of Native AMericans and the enslavement of AFrican Slaves.
American "Rights and Freedoms" were limited to White propertied males only. Poor white trash, Slaves, Native AMericans, and other people of color were considered little more than sub-humans.
You could say that two hundred years later things have changed that much different.
Whenever I listen to these AMerican Nazis...er "Patriots" invoke the American Con-stitution, the American "Revolution," and the Founding Fanatics (like Thomas Jefferson), I can't help but laugh at the outright hypocrisy and lies of their propaganda.
The AMerican Con-stitution--like the AMerican evil Empire itself--have NOTHING DO WITH DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, OR ANY OTHER WHITE-WASHED LIE YOU HAVE BEEN INDOCTRINATED WITH.
Get that through thick little Patriotic head.
This type of glaring, biased reporting by the Associated Press shows that this is, more and more, an information war. Participatory communications are needed immediately, and the information front is one of the fiercest battlegrounds today.
Efforts like Indymedia are a step in the right direction. Decentralized infowarfare groups are also needed, to provide more direct support. However, I do agree that the funding of these operations are other essentials are transparent to an appropriate degree. Indymedia, which really doesn't break any laws, should be 100% transparent.
We need to find out what is really happening. We can do this by talking to people directly affected and by creating more solid networks amongst existing regional infowar communities.
Thank you again!
This was obviously a decisive victory for President Chavez.
However both AP and Reuters have labeled it a "temporary" decision of the Supreme Court in an attempt to delegitimate the importance of the decision.
Actually it was an EMERGENCY decision taken before hearing all of the facts and it was also a unanimous decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court.
The facts show that this unanimous decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court is a preliminary injunction ordering the strike to be halted.
In law, a preliminary injunction will ONLY issue if two conditions are met:
1. The party seeking the injunction is likely to prevail at trial, and
2. If the injunction is not granted, irreparable and grievous harm will result.
With this decision, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has therefore said that they are 1) likely to issue a permanent injunction against this illegal lockout and 2) the reason they acted before they heard all the facts is because Chavez had brought such a compelling case establishing that the nation would be irreparably harmed if the Court failed to act immediately.
And the Court held this unanimously.
Keep in mind that this is no rubber stamp Supreme Court; the day before they had ruled that the recent federalization of the Caracas police force by Chavez was unconstitutional. And they had previously let leaders of the failed April coup against Chavez go free on a technicality.
But instead of reporting this decisive blow against the fascist coup plotters for what it was, the info war specialists at Reuters and the AP chose to label it a "temporary" decision without explaining what a preliminary injunction actually is.
This has fooled the vast majority of the brainwashed citizenry of the Northern Hemisphere, the "Golden Billion" as to what the real facts on the ground are in Venezuela.
But we are not fooled.
Fidel?
They also tend to sabotage the efforts of others who are actually DOING things. The moron is very similar in his attacks to the style used by Rush Windbag, Bill O'Reilly, etc..
The Bill of Rights is the best part of our constitution, and morons who don't support it and don't want to expand it even further are agent-provocateur moles. The Bill of Rights is what has been continually expanded to accomodate forceful demands for those rights. Such as equal rights for blacks. Of course the BIll of Rights is never good enough. Revolution is a continual process, not some ideological deadend.
The Constitution always needs improvement just like it was improved recently in Venezuela. As for my beliefs:
*Ideology, Idiot-ology, Political Parties, Drug War, Corporatism, Fundamentalism, Exploitation. The dangers of worldwide American Culture. Belief systems, roots, reality. The dark side of the American Dream. "Ideologues Anonymous," "Fundamentalists Anonymous," etc.. Comparative world charts for incarceration rates, poverty levels, healthcare stats, etc..
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/ideology.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/ideology.htm
WASHINGTON, DC--Flanked by key members of Congress and his administration, President Bush approved Monday a streamlined version of the Bill of Rights that pares its 10 original amendments down to a "tight, no-nonsense" six.
"We women are on the front line for our right to live in peace and to defend the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, which gives us, for the first time in history, the right to full legal equality, to social security, to a pension for housewives. We are on the streets backing our President and our Bolivarian Revolution.
"Long live the Constitution! No to the fraudulent referendum! No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage! Don’t stop for the stoppage!”
Many details on the progressive aspects of the new constitution concerning women. At Ireland Indymedia:
http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=22333&start=0
a strike is astrike is a strike is a strike.
indy is so good network, because of its anonimity&intersubjectivity, thus not for sale,
indycommunist.
See you on the other side,
indycommunist
a "strike" is not a strike just because the media calls it one....
a lockout of workers by owners and executives is not a strike...
a "strike" in which McDonalds, Wendys and other foreign chain stores shut their doors and refuse to pay their workers is not a strike...
marching around with placards is not a strike...
feebly trying to block highways and millions of workers trying to get to work is not a strike...
a strike with no real support from the working class is not a strike...
a "strike" by a few mafia brownshirts, like George Meany's hardhats beating up anti-Vietnam war protesters, is not a strike... it's fascism.
anyone who has participated in a strike knows that the media never cheers it! the first hint that there is no strike in Venezuela is that the media supports it. Any labor organizer or union member who has ever been on strike knows how it really works.
only spoiled rich kids who've never had to organize and fight for their rights as workers could possibly think that a lockout by owners against workers could be called a strike.
"Support Your Local Indymedia Center
SF-IMC is a grassroots anti-capitalist organization committed to providing an information infrastructure for those who do not have access to the airwaves and resources of corporate media, in support of local and global struggles against exploitation and oppression. Your local IMC is a truly cooperative effort of dozens of independent journalists and media activists, neither owned nor funded by big conglomerates or advertisers - and we need your support to pay the rent and phone bills! Please consider making a year-end tax-deductible contribution to SF Indymedia to keep the news coming in 2003. You can mail us a check or donate online. Thanks!!"
To most people "anti-capitalist" means "communist." I will never send money or recommend others send money to SF Indymedia as long as we will be smeared as "anticapitalist" communists. I have mentioned this before here, and I know the BS that anticapitalist can refer to workers owning some of the shares of a business, etc., etc.. Blah, blah, blah. It's still a capitalist business in a capitalist economy. I don't want a planned economy.
Communism is dead. And good riddance. Get over it. There are many other democratic and progressive anti-corporatist forms of just economics.
I am not a communist. If I wanted to act as a COINTELPRO-type mole here I would call myself "Indycommunist" and I would succeed in marginalizing the effectiveness of Indymedia.
Try other terms. How about:
progressive
radical
anti-corporatist
socialist
progressive taxation
universal healthcare
living wage
less taxes for the poor and middle class
etc, etc.
The moment Venezuela under Chavez becomes undemocratic or communist is the day I oppose it.
I really think that what's happening in all the countries down there is our future, and we need to learn from them, not just to know the lies and ugliness of our own government, but to learn how to defeat it.
Thanks for this.
With all due respect, we note a problem that continually recurs among those residents of the Northern Hemisphere (known to us as the "Golden Billion").
Because they have the luxury of computers and DSL and food and shelter, some of them use possession of these material objects to somehow justify endlessly abstract and postulate, gesture and point, and theorize and debate our starvation.
The majority of the world's population does not have time for petty abstractions and theoretical labeling.
30,000 children die every day from malnutrition-related causes. That's 3 per second. You measure speed in terms of DSL connection rates; we measure time in terms of how many children die prematurely. We have different frames of reference.
Call us what you will, label us what you will, but we are organizing against your plunder and rape and starvation all in the name of your petty abstractions and goofy economic theories to feed, educate, shelter and restore the dignity to our peoples.
It doesn't matter what you call us or how you label our views.
We cannot be stopped. We outnumber you and now we are outsmarting you.
Fidel?
Why don't you go back to the McCarthy School of Independent Thinking, cop?
As for Fidel?, I understand your sentiment but I think it is pretty obvious that the term "communist" is more or less accepted all over the world except the United States. The groups I work with in the south are communist, anarchist, bolivarian, etc -- the point is the south has labels that they use as well. The problem is people from the US are raised on Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Joe McCarthy style thinking so they just want to be "progressive anti-corporatists" who like dont go to Starbucks or something.
It is something many of us have experienced firsthand, and not some Ivory-Tower mental masturbation.
*Electoral systems worldwide, and drug reform. Voting systems. Majoritarian systems. Single transferable vote (preference or choice voting). Instant Runoff Voting. Ranking candidates. Approval voting. Cumulative voting. Multiple run-offs. Electoral college. Plurality representation (first past the post). Majority representation (two round system). Block vote. Alternative vote. Parallel (semi-proportional) representation. List proportional representation. Mixed member proportional representation. Single transferable vote (preference or choice voting). Voting equipment, machines. Direct democracy. Consensus. Modified consensus.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/voting.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/voting.htm
Sigh. Eco-Man, communists include more than ISO Trots. Most anarchists are communists. Only dipshit liberals talk shit on reds, or red-n-blacks. You might call yourself an anarchist, but you are still act and talk like a liberal.
And another thing -- quit spamming every fucking list I am on. You are worse than the Trots with their newspapers with your endless spamming.
I have seen more things lately on Indymedia that show me there is something more to fight for than eating tofu. Thank you Al and Neessie!
there's a big difference between communism and anarchocommunism, although most are capable of understanding. A wobbly who suffered for his positions in the South had a very strong reaction to being termed a 'red' , to distinguish him from green anarchists as a syndicalist:
--------
"
I don't know about most people you know, but I do know history and I have
been an active anarcho-syndicalist for over 32 years and have been directly
connected to the international anarcho-syndicalist movement and those I know
don't connect themselves with Marxism or call themselves "red", maybe black
and red, but not red. If you would study history you would understand the
difference and you would also know that Marx was not the first person to
speak in economic terms of a class struggle. Next, you would understand that
Marxism is about siezing control of the state by a single Marxist party and
impossing the will upon the people, including the working class. You would
know that the first struggles between Marxism and working class anarchists
was over the issue of polital action, whereas the working class anarchists
called for the organization of workers themselves and their own
self-management, and the Marxists wanted to manage the affairs of the
working class by an elite party. In other words anarcho-syndicalists have
been struggling against the domination, oppression and exploitation of the
working class by the Marxists. Sure Marx wrote a few things about capitalism
that is close to what anarchists believe, but that does not make us
Marxists. We don't say that socialism must come out of advanced capitalism,
we don't even say that capitalism had to happen. Marx's historical
dialectical materialism
has been completely rejected by the vast majority of anarcho-syndicalists.
Now if you wish to call yourself a Marxist, that is fine, but stop calling
anarcho-syndicalists that.
As for red baiting. Anarchists who dislike anarcho-syndicalists do that
inorder to discredit us by connecting us to something that most all
anarchists dislike. If you wish to disagree with me, then do that on what I
do believe in and don't stick in stuff that I don't believe in and try to
discredit me by that, for that I will take as disrepect and offensive. Let
me state this one last time, ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM AND MYSELF ARE NOT
CONNECTED TO MARX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As for the environment, it is you and others that keep say that
anarcho-syndicalists focus on enomics alone while others have the focus on
the environment. And I keep pointing out that as an anarcho-syndicalist one
of my major focues is the environment.
( Not everything is directly addressed in the article, but all of it is implicit.)
1: When Chavez is elected President, the "will of the people" must prevail.
When candidates you don't like get elected President, they are "undemocratic, corrupt, upper class puppets" that deserve to be shot and assassinated.
2: When the Venezuelan Army and the Bolivarian circles contain and shoot protesters, it's "in defense of democracy".
When other governments attempt to do such things, they are "breaking Human Rights".
3: You consider oligarchs all the people in the 3rd World who have the SAME freaking privileges and things that you blind egoists have in the 1st world.
For you there is no middle class down here, it's all about the dirty rich and the awfully poor.
4:If some member of the middle class in Venezuela strikes, like when the Altamira and other public squares are filled with anti-Chavez protestors, they are all just a "small" group of vampires that suck the blood out of the proletariats, blah blah ( even when the squares are FULL of people......Sheesh, they must ALL be DIRTY OLIGARCHS no?).
5: The moment Chavez ends his term, you will fail to recognize his legitimate successor and will demand "new elections" or some such crap until you get a Chavez ver. 2.0 back up.
6: When protesters attack the Venezuelan government, it's totally unfair and resentful, something that must NOT be permitted and it's utterly disgusting.
When rebels elsewhere (for example Palestinians, Al Quaida, ETA, IRA and FARC) blow up cars, people, etc. they are "heroes of the people" and you wish that their reign of terror (that affect BOTH the innocent and the guilty, but you don't care about that) continues for ever and ever.
7: You condemn outside involvement in Venezuelan affairs, yet you demand and promote outside involvement in Israel, Russia, Colombia, Northern Ireland, etc.
8: Has Chavez fufilled Bolivar's Dream and united America yet?
You forget that the Venezuelans themselves began to destroy Bolivar's dream, when he was still alive. And the current pro-Chavez generation has no wish to create a South American Union, nor has even started any such attempt.
an apolitical report??????
is there such a thing?
if you believe that, would you like to buy the golden gate bridge? we can get you a good deal on it
the "objective" monologues political bias is hung out to dry in this case
giordano and narconews.com caught those guys in a huge web of lies.
sure, he's got an agenda, but his story keeps checking out. his "political" reports keep turning out to be better guides to what happens than the ones who say theyre apolitical.
and if you're one of the ones he caught, I hope he rams it down your throats now!
I dont know if youre old enough to remember I.F. Stone but all month long reading narconews I'm wondering whether hes secretly alive and reporting from "somewhere in america"
the Bolivarian Circles, you would think they are armed paramilitary
organizations of vampires coming to drink their precious children's blood. I
went and spent time with these Circles. Do you what they're really doing?
The old guy in every neighborhood who loves the architecture, the history,
you know him, these guys even exist in San Francisco and New York, the one
who goes and spends hours at the library researching the construction of the
local church? Well, this guy is now in the Bolivarian Circle. And for the
first time he has an eager audience of children and adults and elders all
excited to study and learn the history of their barrio. And the lady who
understands herbs and natural medicine is holding very popular workshops and
training sessions to help everyone understand it. She's the Bolivarian
Circle, too. So is the neighborhood baseball team, and kids who do rap or
theater. They're the Bolivarian Circles, too. That's what they are "armed"
with: library books, herbal remedies, boomboxes and baseball gloves.
------------------
TRASTOR: The only thing Bolivarian Circles lack is love for nature, they see us ecologists as anti-chavez, since chavez is promoting destruction of the environment, thru "development", in my neighbourhood Chavez is promoting gold mining. I live in a protected area in the frontier Venezuela/Brasil, but chavez goverment is promoting gold mining here of transnationals. And we ecologists as always are seen as "subversive", "enemies public number one" because we say: protect!, Conserve!, and Bolivarian Circles says: "Social progress", "development", "work", "work", as the ancient egipt, where the peoples constructed pyramids for the love to god-faraoh, now in venezuela the peoples construct seconds bridges over the orinoco river, destroy Perija Mountains with coal mining (Chavez signed the exploitation of transnational coal mining there in Perija in august 2002), and the military engineers construct roads, everybody for the love of GOD-Chavez, like the ancient faraoh.
Al Giordano: I could just see the Gunsons and others like him sitting there, thinking to
them selves, "if this guy were my gardener or chauffeur, he'd be a lot of
fun." Oh, it's a sad thing, what happens to U.S. and British and Spaniard
correspondents when they enter lands with oligarchies, because they start to
think of themselves as landed gentry. They move into the wealthy
neighborhoods and live behind walls, they send their kids to private schools
with the other oligarchs, and from that perspective flows their reporting.
They also develop very unhealthy parasitic relationships with US and
European Embassy, and multinational corporate, spin-doctors. But back to
Gunson, because he's got this coming.
-------------------------
TRASTOR: There is a problem of dignity, perhaps reading this link in spanish we can understand:
http://www.elistas.net/lista/lea/archivo/indice/3151/msg/3179/
Also here is a link to Africa, where venezuela is something alike, I live here and work in environment/ecology/activism/indigenous cooperation/etc, and this african news seems to me like Venezuela and all the world is the same everywhere, bolivarian parliamentarys are also not taking seriously the environment:
http://www.elistas.net/lista/lea/archivo/indice/3151/msg/3170/
Al Giordano:I had known Chiapas before and after the Zapatista uprising and therefore
had a yardstick by which to measure what had occurred. And the same thing
has occurred with the masses of Venezuela. They're not available any more to
sign up for duty as slaves. And this is what drives the former ruling class
crazy. The gardener, the cook, the maid, the nanny, the tutor, the
chauffeur, and of course the farmer and factory worker, no longer have to
pretend that the master is god.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TRASTOR: Are you sure Al?, As I see it, we venezuelans are now more ready than ever to be slaves of the revolution... Also is an entire latin American problem, you know? I have my funded dubts about Lula-Chavez, If the USA does not fuck us venezuelans with FTAA, then MERCOSUR will do for sure... Chavez is lying to everybody about his fight to globalization, he got his own globalization.
http://mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz/sinfronteras/chulick.html
Al Giordano: For almost 48 hours, nobody, but nobody, in the English language news world
except for Narco News was predicting his return to power. All the
"experts" - including many left academics - thought it would go the way of
Chile 1973. The people - including the primarily poor rank-and-file members
of the Armed Forces - literally rose up and by the time he was restored we
were living in a new América, healed, finally, from the 29-year-old wound of
the 1973 Chile coup.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
TRASTOR: But still nobody in english, not even narconews, says something for protecting our venezuelan environment and biodiversity from Chavez "developments".
Al Giordano: "The true revolutionary is an illegal par excellence. The man who adjusts
his actions to the Law can be, in the end, a good domesticated animal; but
not a revolutionary"
------------------------------------------------------------------
TRASTOR: You are contradicting yourself: because here in venezuela is a new constitution and all bolivarians rules by it.
Then how they can be revolutionaries if they are legal? (following your arguments)
Al Giordano: Hey, when the battle is joined, in times of crisis, people really show their
true colors. Remember that in Spain the anarchists fought against fascism.
They didn't claim neutrality during an hour of moral crisis! I have read the
"analysis" that this group claims to offer. It's quite rote. They claim to
offer reporting on what is going on in Venezuela, but they're not reporting
any news. They just complain. Somebody called them "beautiful losers." I'd
say that shoe fits.
----------------------------------------------
TRASTOR: I think EL LIBERTARIO is not taking a neutral position, they are delivering truly information of what is happening here in venezuela. And I know this is true, if you don't want to see it, it is your problem...
------------
-----------
-----------
REALLY PEOPLES OF THE EARTH: I receive +/- 250 emails messages daily, because I am subscribed to all kind of news agencies from all over the world, and EL LIBERTARIO newspaper is the best alternative information I have crossed by until now about venezuelan situation.
--Trastor...
"The Chicago Tribune sent Seldes to Mexico in 1927 but his articles criticizing American corporations concerning their use of the country's mineral rights, were not always published by the newspaper. Seldes returned to Europe but found that increasingly his work was being censored to fit the political views of the newspaper's owner, Robert McCormack. "
-----------------------------------------
--------------------------------
from: TRASTOR
I still don't see a glimpse of this Seldes' ecological interests in Al Giordano's writings writings about Chavez and Venezuela ... Giordano is too socially antropocentric in his views of this struglle ocurring now in Venezuela.
Chavez is destroying as never before happened in Venezuela the environment. During the last 40 years in Venezuela it was more difficult for a transnational to obtain a permit to exploit natural resources, like coal or gold, sometimes years passed for a transnational to start operating in Venezuela, but with this new goverment of Chavez, they have speed up all these boureocracy for foreigners companies to exploit our lands... Now, thanks to Chavez "under-covered-globalisation" transnationals just need 6 months or less to obtain a permit to exploit national mineral resources and take it all out of Venezuela.
Trastor
From:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1550624_comment.php#1553315
---------------------------------------------------
RE: Imagine this dude in charge of an army!
by Trastor • Sunday December 22, 2002 at 05:58 PM
interfaz [at] cantv.net
Chavez was elected, it is true, but with lies he managed to hipnotize not only all the poors, but almost everybody of well understanding in Venezuela. Because he promised like all politicians a lot, I invite all of you to practice some spanish and read the opinions of all the venezuelan ecologists at:
http://www.elistas.net/lista/lea/archivo
(opinions of ecologists for me are not so different from the EL LIBERTARIO point of view)
The most important conclusion for me now (i am venezuelan living in the frontier in a small town called Santa Elena de Uairen) is that everybody should help out chavez right now, IT IS A MUST, ALL FORCES MUST HELP CHAVEZ NOW! but only because Chavez is the less bad of the options for venezuela right now...
Trastor
mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz
add your comments
RE: Primitive?
by Trastor • Sunday December 22, 2002 at 08:11 PM
interfaz [at] cantv.net
YES!!!, the whole situation is very primitive. In part I think the fault of this primitivity is of the mass media, but not only the commercial mass media, also chavez's stated owned TV channel fueled this hostility on the population.
We can remember 3 years of agressive discourse by chavez to us, his fellow venezuelans. In order to prepare us for this struggle against US capitalism. Now Chavez is not with this language any more, like the child who throw a stone and hides the hand trying to cover his action.
And the commercial media is fueling the violence now with his 24 hour anti-chavez campaign.
There are persons who discuss on the streets, and shout to each other: I WANT PEACE!, I WANT PEACE!, but they shout aloud with the couldrum of anger in his face expressions, incongruent to see this people with such a cross-short-circuited neurons!!!!!, first Chavez instigates his bolivarian circles since 3 years ago with sub-bliminal discurses of "taking the sword", "resisting until death", etc, and now his own "god-alike-egipcian faraoh" leader (Chavez) tells them to look for peace, but the damaged is already done, the people is discussing with much violence!.
I invite to all of you to hear discussions happening every day at a web site crowded with venezuelan ecologists, here are real anarchist points of view sometimes:
http://www.elistas.net/lista/lea/archivo
The only bad thing is that most of the messages there are in spanish...
The problem here is not that a person calls primitive the poors, no, never, the primitive in all this situation is in poors, middle class, and the richs, everybody in venezuela is experiencing this "primitive" problem in their minds, not only the poors.
And I am scared of this, I am venezuelan and live in venezuela...
Trastor
mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz
add your comments
Hi Everybody,
Reviewing my interview with SF-IMC I noticed that, while speaking about the events in Venezuela last April, I said something about how "nobody" in the English-language media world, except for Narco News, had predicted Chávez's return to power during the short-lived coup d'etat.
Uh, I was wrong about that. Last April there was also Vheadline.com
Of course, I was guilty of my own over-socialization as a gringo there, thinking only of North America and European news sources, and forgetting about the importantísimo Vheadline.com out of Venezuela.
Last April, I wrote:
"Then, on Friday night, what history will call 'the counter-coup by authentic journalism' began, as the Vheadline.com online newspaper and its editor Roy S. Carson, news editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue and 14 reporters throughout Venezuela began to break the information blockade.
"Among many authentic journalists who turned the tide, Carson deserves the democratic medal of valor. At 11 a.m. on Thursday, before the coup occurred, his Vheadline.com website had gone into the shop for maintenance. When it rains it pours: Carson woke up Friday morning recovering from pre-ocular surgery he had received on Thursday, but upon learning of the coup he rose from his bed to change the history of América. His website was inoperative, but Carson, undaunted, began filing email alerts which were published by Narco News, Indy Media, and many others of the Authentic Journalism Renaissance."
You can read that entire essay, "Three Days that Shook the Media," at:
http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html
So, in correction, please accept my April text as a better reflection of my views than that statement in the December text.
We've been linking to Vheadline stories all month, and Vheadline columnist Charlie Hardy will be a member of our faculty in February for the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. I really do hold that crew in the highest regard and we're very lucky to have them reporting out of Venezuela in English.
Vheadline has been subject to a lot of pressures, financial and other, but keeps breaking the information blockade. You can add it to your favorites file on your browser at:
http://www.vheadline.com/p1
Apologies to our colleagues at Vheadline!
salud y abrazo,
Al Giordano
p.s. I will answer Trastor, above, probably later today... in the MASH unit that is the Narco Newsroom we've got many choppers coming in with a lot of information to publish, so please excuse a short delay, but some of Trastor's points of course deserve a respectful response, and I thank him for the spirit in which he has offered his critique. He'll get some clear answers and responses shortly.
To Mr. or Mrs. "Yes":
Why do you ask others to do for you what you can do for yourself?
If you don't like my reporting, do your own!
If you don't see an "apolitical reporter" doing it, do it yourself!
Don't ask others to do your work for you - that's the problem that the rich people in Venezuela (and the United States) have. They're want others to bake their bread for them, without even paying a decent wage!
Harvest your own wheat and bake your own bread. That's what IndyMedia allows you to do!
I invite you - in fact, I challenge you! - to publish your idea of an "apolitical" story here! Or if you see one by someone else, publish it here. And let it stand up to the same scrutiny to which I subject my reports.
I even invite you to submit your reporting to Narco News for publication!
I have so far in my long vocation as a journalist never met an apolitical reporter. I've met liars who claimed to be apolitical, but their work has never risen to that unreachable standard.
I much prefer honest reporters who tell you where they stand, and thus allow you to form your own view of the facts with full disclosure of our own positions.
But don't complain that others won't do your work for you.
As Jello Biafra said, "Don't hate the media, be the Media."
Or do you expect others to do reporting "a la carte" just for you?
As Malvina Reynolds - another Bay Area legend - sang in her song, "The Little Red Hen,"
"I planted and growed this grain of wheat
them that works not shall not eat
that's my credo, the little bird said
and that's why they called her 'Red'"
Okay, sorry, gotta run: I'm going on KPFA's Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein in a few minutes - those of you in the Bay Area, tune in!
Authentic Journalism never sleeps... it dreams.
salud,
Al Giordano
Los dueños de estos grandes medios de comunicación que detentan un gran poder económico y solo están pendientes de por sus intereses de lucro, además de estar asociados a intereses externos contrarios al país y a los grandes traidores gerentes de PDVSA, que tienen sueldos de decenas de millones de bolívares, pero aun así quieren detener la industria petrolera Venezolana o sea que reciben un pago para estorbar.
La Mátrix Venezolana ha creado un mundo virtual y una Mátrix de opinión adversa al gobierno pero solo basada en mentiras, y han convencido a gran parte de la población Venezolana pero no a la gran mayoría sobre todo de los sectores populares, tienen varios años en esta tarea y han gastado grandes cantidades de dinero en este cometido. Para esto la Mátrix ha usado todo tipo de artimañas, montajes de videos, grabaciones falsas, en resumen han explotado hasta el limite la tecnología en la falsificación y tergiversación y explotación del subconsciente humano.
El sector de la población mas susceptible a esta alienación es la clase media indudablemente porque siempre han vivido un poco aislados del mundo que los rodea y su única ventana a la realidad es la televisión y demás medios. Siempre han tenido la falsa creencia un poco para aplacar sus conciencias de que los que tienen menos son menos que ellos y ellos mismos son culpables de su situación, que son flojos y muchas otras interminables excusas usadas para estar tranquilos de sus conciencias.
Todo este conjunto de cosas los hace bastante fácil del convencer, claro la Mátrix no los alienó instantáneamente, lo hizo poco a poco, primero diciendo los errores de la revolución que se esta gestando aquí en Venezuela, después pasaron con las medias verdades, luego comenzaron a falsear un 10% de las informaciones, un 20%, 30%, 40%, 60%, 80% y al final 100% de las informaciones. De manera que al final quedaron atrapados en una Mátrix que es un mundo virtual en el cual están atrapados ahora y del cual no les será nada fácil salir.
De esta manera la Matriz Venezolana tiene a su disposición una cantidad importante aun sin ser mayoría de personas pertenecientes mas que todo a la clase media alta a las cuales la revolución las llama escuálidas, estas personas la Matriz las maneja a su antojo por que aun cuando muchas son universitarias con postgrados y doctorados ademas dicen ser inteligentes han perdido su capacidad de analizar y pensar por que están idiotizados y alienados por la Mátrix.
Muchos de ellos están tan gravemente atrapados por ella que no aceptan la cruda realidad que los rodea, para ellos no existió el 13 de abril cuando el pueblo libero a Chávez, y tampoco existen los millones de gente del pueblo que sale todos los días a la calle a defender su industria petrolera, a protestar frente a los canales de televisión, a protestar frente a los bancos para que cumplan con sus obligaciones con los ahorristas. No aceptan que el paro fue un fracaso y muchos de ellos están perdiendo mucho pero mucho dinero que no podrán recuperar mas nunca al no abrir sus negocios porque otros se lo están ganando por ellos. No aceptan que no hay nadie imprescindible en este mundo y que la industria petrolera puede ser manejada por personas que quizá no tengan el mismo conocimiento (según ellos, no lo creo así) pero que tampoco estorbaran ni sabotearan su funcionamiento. No entienden y solo en su mundo virtual es aceptado que saboteando la industria petrolera, haciendo operación morrocoy en los bancos, tratando de impedir el flujo de energía y productos básicos e importantes, le están haciendo bien al país en resumen están tan alienados y fuera de la realidad que creen que hundiendo el barco todo el mundo se salvará.
Cuando esta revolución supere este punto de inflexión habrá que hacer un gran esfuerzo por liberar de la Mátrix a esta pobre gente. Que auque la Mátrix será destruida mas temprano que tarde, las secuelas de esta en los escuálidos y la sociedad tardaran mas en superarse.
Por: (pedroperez747 [at] hotmail.com), con el asesoramiento de Neo.
Joining the government in Spain is generally recognized as a greivious error by most anarchists.The burden of proof to drastically alter the consensus on this is on Al and when he quotes no great anarchists to support him,makes no fresh insights,adds nothing but rubbishy jargon, he has lost me.He sounds more marxist than anarchist.
The low attack on the small libertarian group also smacks of marxism or stalinism if you want to be more exact.The terms McCartheyist and witchfinder also spring to mind as this nasty tradition is a long one.
I find anarchism seems to have hit a new low in this interview and it's republication by Chuck0.
Hopefully a new wave of anarchism from below will sweep away all these bogus 'anarchist' trendsetters who are distorting and twisting the very heart of our battle against the state.
Why do you clutch so tightly to your Manichean values that there are "two" sides to every issue? Why not four sides? Why do you insist that we live in a polar world of black and white? It seems like you have a very deep Manichean bias, albeit unconscious.
And many of us in the South just were never exposed to that Manichean crap. I suggest you read Gabriel Garcia Marquez as an antidote.
Conversely, on the other hand, what is the "other" side of the Holocaust?
You and I are products of our culture, our history and our experience. To deny them and to demand reporters to deny their history prevents the development of cultural learning as you try to force us into a homogenized existence.
Fidel?
"The most important conclusion for me now (i am venezuelan living in the frontier in a small town called Santa Elena de Uairen) is that everybody should help out chavez right now, IT IS A MUST, ALL FORCES MUST HELP CHAVEZ NOW! but only because Chavez is the less bad of the options for venezuela right now..."
Also, thanks for the environmental view, Trastor. You said there was a lack of English info on environmental news in Venezuela.
I suggest you post some English reports at various Indymedia sites. Also, maybe you can post some reports at the environmental section at vheadline.com
http://www.vheadline.com/p1/environment.asp
I agree that everybody can
BE THE MEDIA. So
JUST DO IT YOURSELVES.
There are lots of free web hosts people can use too. I have a free website at corporatism.tripod.com that gets (counting free mirror sites) over 20 thousand hits a month from over 13 thousand unique visitors a month.
http://corporatism.tripod.com
Multiple independent news sources are the main way to stop antidemocratic forces and centralized control, whether from the right, the left, up, down, red, black, green, or whatever.
Anarcho-Fortune Teller writes on Saturday December 21 2002 @ 09:25PM PST: [ reply | parent ]
Let me look into my crystal ball. I see... I see... every marxist-leninst in North America currently salivating over a potential Chavez -- Lula -- FARC -- S.C. Marcos axis of the people's revolution!
I see... I see... old stirrings of red revolutionary hopes not felt since the Sandinistas. Quick! Time to denounce the anarchists before they mess up the glorious axis of the people's revolution!
First step: obliterate the memory of the thousands of anarchists, both North and Central American, who worked to promote and stregthen the Zapatista struggle. From here on in the Zapatista struggle was purely a building block in the glorious red axis of the people's revolution!
pr writes on Saturday December 21 2002 @ 10:56PM PST: [ reply | parent ]
I made a comment and a response a minute ago that was totally axed.The censorship on this board is getting really opressive ChuckO,whats the story?
Reverend Chuck0 writes on Sunday December 22 2002 @ 07:24AM PST: [ reply | parent ]
Given your hostile behavior towards me and your annoying tendency to post nonsense after each fucking story, I've more or less banned you from posting to this website. If your post in on topic and doesn't attack me or other activists, it will stay up. Otherwise, I intend to use the delete button rather liberally until you apologize to me for your campaign of harassment.
asan writes on Saturday December 21 2002 @ 11:29PM PST: [ reply | parent ]
This post seems like the usual hysterical leftism. The anarchists who posted were clearly even more opposed to the coup-plotter than to Chavez. Moreover, in what way did they aid the coup/"strike"?
- The poster seems to expect that any popular power would involve the same kind of public relations that all governments engage in; absolute unanimity. Actual popular would involve serious debate and discussion around issues.
- And naturally, Chavez isn't much of an expression of real popular power. He's populist, maybe liberal democrat. He still rankles the venezuelan middle and upper classes but that's a different point. It's nicer that he's opposing the US but there's a strong limit to either his populism or his opposition to the US. Essentially, he cannot get rid of the capitalist sector which opposes him since he can't get rid of capitalism. Thus he will wind-up with a thousand coups which he can channel popular support against. But anyone opposed to the system should think of better ways than seeing Chavez as their idol.
pr writes on Sunday December 22 2002 @ 07:55AM PST: [ reply | parent ]
I am not attacking other activists so much as defending the small libertarian group attacked so damn viciously in this article. Also don't flatter yourself that I ever harrassed you.I went public when you stopped answering my letters,thats all.As for nonsense,thats what happens when you cut out posts that others,(like yr fave leninist)respond to. I have provided a user profile to you and if I post the slightest bit of nonsense then anyone can call me on it.Anarchist means and ends are intertwined and we will not win any converts who see the possibility of having less rights and freedoms under anarchism than the present. Natural justice demands the presumption of innocence,the right to face your accusers and the right to fair proccess.
Reverend Chuck0 writes on Sunday December 22 2002 @ 08:48AM PST: [ reply | parent ]
Whatever, PR. If you persist in using this forum to attack activists elsewhere, or continue attacking me her or on Indymedia, your posts will be deleted. You also seem to have gotten it into your head that everybody in the world wants to hear what you think about every news story. Those posts will be deleted too.
In other words, you have engaged in boorish, hostile behavaior in a meeting and I'm kicking you out the door until you can agree to post in a civil manner.
lkkjh writes on Sunday December 22 2002 @ 09:26PM PST: [ reply | parent ]
This is the same BS Bush uses. Oh, we can't have any criticism of us because we must all unite against the big bad evil ones.
censored writes on Monday December 23 2002 @ 12:09PM PST: [ reply | parent ]
It is exactly the same;"you are with us or your with the terrorists."It is crap and combined with the low blows on the small libertarian group raises the most serious questions against weird Al Gioraldo,Nessie and even the reverend for reprinting it and slicing and dicing critical comments.This is a new low in the post 9-11 anarchist scene.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/12/20/4967583
It is my desire that you and all others in Venezuela stay safe from harm.
Ok, Al Giordano, UPETOY!!!, that means "friend" in pemon language, now that we understand each other a little bit more, I got still really a hard work to do rising again the reputation of the news posted in the only web site so far that I, Trastor TUPONKEN, (that means "a non-indigenous person" on pemon language). have seen the realities behind the screens, the only news bulletin talking seriously about the real thing I think is EL LIBERTARIO (in my personal opinion), the only revolutionary newspaper that tells not only "the half that we want to hear" in order to see a "beautiful revolution" in venezuela...
First of all I want to say here that I am not anarchist, I just have a relation with journalists of EL LIBERTARIO, because few journalist in venezuela ever published the news of pemon struggles in the years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, (and still have not ended this struggle of pemon indians against Chavez undercovered own style of globalization). Other very respected journalist who also published this news of SOLIDARITY with the PEMON PEOPLES of venezuela was the journalist VANESSA DAVIES, a good journalists indeed as Al Giordano and me accord. And some news also about this struggles of indigenous fighting against helicopters of the ABB company in order to preserve their dignity, their territories, their cultures, also their fights of women, grandmothers, youngs indigenous against soldiers who Chavez sent in direct presidential order to militarize the Kamoiran communities in Gran Sabana.
In this PREMISE of EL LIBERTARIO regarding venezuelan alternative coverage of news, they say that they started to publish there alternative news because both goverment and commercial TV channels and media are not telling the truth, we must remember that telling half of the truth is also a lie...
Well, let me explain some things about this partialization in each TV channel in venezuela.
The commercial channels are just brainwashing all venezuelans, they always criticized Chavez for speaking 3 or 4 hours speeches on TV, but commercial channels got now 3 weeks of continuos abnormal TV programming, 3 weeks of only news coverage 24 hours a day against Chavez. Not even a single movie or soap opera, just the news of the "strike" and the problems regarding gasoline, etc.
The Chavez Channel, VTV Channel 8 is just the same!, it is also brainwashing his followers, bolivarians, bolivarians circles or squared or any follower of Chavez who sees VTV Channel 8.
There is a long list of things I want to say here to explain better VTV Channel 8, I will try to resume a lot and get to the point quickly...
DURING APRIL'S CUP, Just when the largest march of opposition started his walking to face death, Chavez told in VTV-8: "Don't believe the commercial media, that march is of just a small group of 'escualidos', " SO FAR it was the first lie!, indeed that march of April was huge!, Chavez continued to speak on the TV screen: "What is happening is that the commercial media have special cameras that reproduce the peoples on the background in the video"...(!) THIS IS NOT JUST A LIE (the march indeed was HUGE!) it is demagogy.
Then another thing: Just before that HUGE march of the middle class the most and few richs opposing Chavez, (and also few poors marching against Chavez!), just before the march arrived to where they started to cease living, in VTV-8 of Chavez media, it was interviewing the people who was waiting outside Miraflores who were waiting to receive the HUGE opposition march coming to take Chavez out of his chair.
There was Aristobulo Isturiz and other ministrys of Chavez between the crowd, they were expresing their call for all the "barrios" (ghettos) to get down to Miraflores to defend Chavez against that HUGE march coming.
IS THIS NOT CALLING PEOPLE TO VIOLENCE?????, The goverment was calling to violence?, yes. shortly after the high ministrys of Chavez talked, the journalist of VTV-8 started to interview the people gathered there, and one of this men told aloud live on TV : "We are waiting for them to come (the opposition march), because we have been told that they are coming with machetes and stones to get Chavez out of president"... That day, the oposing march had no stones, neither machetes. If somebody can get acces to videos recorded that day during this VTV-8 interviews. please confirm here, my word maybe is not enough, but I know it happened because I saw it with my own eyes, that man and all the crowd outside miraflores WAS TOLD that the opposition was coming with machetes...
Exaclty as i wrote: "WE HAVE BEEN TOLD", by whom? Chavez, Isturiz, other high rank ministry?, who knows, but I got lot of work now thanks to AL GIORDANO, I will write here about every article published in EL LIBERTARIO, is a long way, not easy, but in the end TRUTH WILL PREVAIL...
PLEASE FOLLOW ME, READ EL LIBERTARIO AGAIN, THINK BETTER, FOR YOU, NOT BY AL GIORDANOS or TRASTOR's IDEAS, just start thinking for yourself, please, everybody...PEOPLES OF THIS PLANET. Stay tuned as I post here my coments on every article of el libertario newspaper of VENEZUELA SOON!
Trastor.
Trastor.
It sounds like radical chic to me. Try a different format next time - less Al, more Venezuela. And don't blindly smear anarchists - its stupid and sectarian.
"Somebody claims to be an "anarchist" and we have to take them seriously? What have they ever done? Frankly, I find it offensive, since I am one of many who have paid a price again and again and again for being a true-to-life anarcho-syndicalist of strong Situationist tendencies. But I've gone to jail for it. I've been sued for it. I've lost jobs because of it.
This "libertario" group is nothing more than a few dilettantes who have never accomplished anything. Serious revolutionaries and anarchists down here laugh at them, and suspect their motives. I don't think this group is showing any leadership, intelligence, or analysis, at this hour of moral crisis and I can't help but wonder about their motives."
I'd call that smearing, especially since it doesn't offer any compelling support or evidence than Giordiano's word against the "Libertario" folks.
Tofu burgers? What they fuck does that have to do with anything. Anyone with a brain or a decent grasp on the contemporary anarchist movement knows that the "lifestyle" vs. "social" schism is a pissing war between cranky internet denizens and a few deluded twits who write for anarchist newspapers. Most anarchists I know eat tofu burgers to power themselves through a day of social struggle! Fuck your dichotomy.
by eco man • Sunday December 22, 2002 at 04:22 AM
The previous moron poster calling himself "George Fucking Washington" attacks me based on my support for the Bill of Rights. The moron also assumes I am on the far-right. I could just rest my case there, but morons should not be given a break, since they tend to come to power unless checked."
The only moron is yourself Eco-Freak. I didn't say you were "Far-Right." I accused you of being an American Nationalist/Patriot. American Nationalists/Patriots--whether they be Far-Right or clueless Liberals who call themselves anarchists and democrats--are all the same.
And they are all the same because they refuse to question the Big LIe of American "Democracy and Freedom" itself--including their Holy Document of the Constitution.
"Like Bush or Stalin or Hitler. There are antidemocratic, anticonstitutional forces on all sides. Ready to coopt governments at any time. "
Bush, Stalin, Hitler? How about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other slaveowning American Ethnic Cleansers? As for your line about "coopting governments at any time," you mean kinda like the NEW WORLD ORDER and those Black Heliocopters ready to implement a UN World Government? LOL.
"They also tend to sabotage the efforts of others who are actually DOING things. The moron is very similar in his attacks to the style used by Rush Windbag, Bill O'Reilly, etc.. "
What are you doing, moron? What have you accomplished--other than pimping off of the Bolivarian Circles in order to push your own agenda? This is something that First World Losers....er activists are very good at. They can't accomplish jack squat in their own overfed, overprivileged godforsaken countries, so they jump on the bandwagon of whatever Third World Struggle is "hot" at the moment. See, for example, Anarchists and the Zapatistas.
"The Bill of Rights is the best part of our constitution, and morons who don't support it and don't want to expand it even further are agent-provocateur moles."
You are classic paranoiac. Anybody who disagrees with you is either a spook, agent-provocateur, or mole.
You got X-Files on your brain don't you?
As for YOUR American Constitution and the Bill of LIes. These documents ain't worth the paper that their printed on. They haven't protected anything or anyone. Ask those Muslim and ARab immigrants who are being subject to American State Repression since 9-11 and the phony "War on Terrorism."
"The Bill of Rights is what has been continually expanded to accomodate forceful demands for those rights. Such as equal rights for blacks. Of course the BIll of Rights is never good enough. Revolution is a continual process, not some ideological deadend. "
The Constitution and Bill of LIes was created and exists today in order to *CONTAIN,* *CIRCUMSCRIBE,* and PREVENT any kind of REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, you moron. As such, it is very similar in political function to Electoral politics. Work within the system begging and pleading for America to "accomodate" your "forceful demands"--instead of working to BRING DOWN THE AMERICAN EMPIRE ITSELF. For all your phony radical rhetoric, you don't even understand this basic fact.
I'll bet you are some Angry White Middle Class male who is pissed off at the world because you are losing the priviliege, power, and wealth which First World elites in general take as a natural birth right--much like the White Middle Class Oligarchs in Venezuela you would oppose!
"The Constitution always needs improvement just like it was improved recently in Venezuela. "
The more bullshit that spews out of your mouth, the more you sound like a goddamn Liberal American Nationalist. Beneath all of your pseudo-radical rants about anticorporatism (whetever this means), you believe in and defend the Imperialist American system and its legitimizing ideology--such as the Constitution or Bill of Lies.
All of your rhetoric about how the Constitution can "accomodate" (i.e. Coopt) the demands of those minorities and other people being oppressed by America inadvertantly reveals much of your agenda is about.
YOU want to Reform the American Imperialist system--all in order to save it. Fuck that noise. Its long over due that your AMerican Empire--and ALL your institutions including the Con-Stitution and the Bill of LIes--be ripped apart as the Political Fraud which they are.
"As for my beliefs:
*Ideology, Idiot-ology, Political Parties, Drug War, Corporatism, Fundamentalism, Exploitation. The dangers of worldwide American Culture. Belief systems, roots, reality. The dark side of the American Dream. "Ideologues Anonymous," "Fundamentalists Anonymous," etc.. Comparative world charts for incarceration rates, poverty levels, healthcare stats, etc.. "
This ain't a set of beliefs. This is a friggin' Laundry list of issues that you probably barely understand. Typical of you clueless White Liberals (masquerading as Anarchists, Radicals, or whatever).
P.S. By the way, anti-Corporatism is not the same thing as opposition to the Capitalist system itself. Most of the White Middle Class "activists" who rail and whine about Corporations (see Ralph Nader) are in no ways opposed to the Capitalist system itself such as the ideas of Private property or Market Economies.
*Ideology, Idiot-ology, Political Parties, Drug War, Corporatism, Fundamentalism, Exploitation. The dangers of worldwide American Culture. Belief systems, roots, reality. The dark side of the American Dream. "Ideologues Anonymous," "Fundamentalists Anonymous," etc.. Election season is when Drug Warriors really come out of the closet and spin their lies. Year-round too, but especially during the election "silly season." Comparative world charts for incarceration rates, poverty levels, healthcare stats, etc..
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/ideology.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/ideology.htm
Yeah.
As for your links, sorry. I don't have time to check out every "freak with a website" in the world.
Acerca de Hugo Chavez, Sr Ramonet:
Entre periodistas mentirosos y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
Entre petroleros contaminantes y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
Entre gringos imperialistas asesinos y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
Entre Fedecamaras mercantilista y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
Entre IESA globalizado y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
Entre ALCA neoliberal y Chavez
prefiero a Chavez
ENTRE LA SAGRADA DUDA Y CHAVEZ
aun prefiero la duda, Sr. Ramonet director de Le Monde Diplomatique, es
Usted uno de mis heroes antiglobalizacion, pero uno de mis lemas es que
todo puede y debe ser refutado, aunque Usted le de la razon a Chavez.
Chavez, aunque lideriza un proceso de cambio en Venezuela que es unico en
el mundo actualmente, tambien podria estar engan~andonos a todos, incluso a
Usted...
Como saber que hay en realidad dentro de la cabeza de alguien?
Como?
Lo siento por desconfiar aun cuando la vision que Ud nos ha venido ha
presentar indica que deberia apoyar a Chavez. Pero no apoyo nada, ni a
Chavez, de quien no me fio, ni tampoco apoyo a los periodistas, ni a los
medios, ni a los petroleros, los gringos, los comerciantes, los
economistas, los tratados de comercio neoliberales, no apoyo nada en
Venezuela en este momento, renuncio, que se caigan a golpes entre ellos si
quieren, despues que terminen de pelear y quede lo que quede, con un
posible Chavez que si beneficio, o con un Chavez dictador, o un Chavez
derrotado, lo que sea que termine de todo esto, para que no digan que me
quede de brazos cruzados en todo esto, prometo sembrar arboles para
reforestar lo que quede.
Ojala me equivoque yo, y no que sea Usted Sr. Ramonet un utilizado mas por
Chavez.
Si Usted hubiera tenido que lidiar con un Mega Tendido Electrico
Internacional y Con Chavez, a lo mejor me entenderia.
TRASTOR
(Jose Rafael Leal)
Santa Elena de Uairen
Venezuela
Sr. Ramonet, de Le Monde Diplomatique, sera Ud. uno de los organizadores del
foro de Porto Alegre, Director de un periodico Frances famoso por
promocionar la tasa Tobin. Sin duda sera Ud. un guia, un ejemplo a seguir
por las personas del mundo que desean e intentan un mundo quizás mejor donde
los problemas medioambientales y sociales sean radicalmente solucionados.
Por favor le pido que recapacite muy bien su concepto de Chavez, porque si
bien el aparentemente es un heroe para Usted, aqui en Venezuela nos ha
militarizado con tropas de combate a un Parque Nacional (patrimonio de la
humanidad en la ONU) para someter indigenas aborigenes temerosos con buenas
razones del "progreso social" propuesto por Chavez y asi llevar a toda costa
energia electrica de una mega-represa venezolana hasta otro país, y el agua
que llena esa mega-represa proviene de bosques primarios amazonicos
venezolanos que estan siendo mal desarrollados a traves de multiples
inversiones millonarias para hacer carreteras secundarias asfaltadas para
distintas areas para mineria de diamante y oro: semejante incongruencia no
se comprende de destruir con mineria las fuentes boscosas del agua para la
mega-represa. Y todo esto que le cuento del mega-tendido electrico, la
mega-represa y las mega-minas suceden en Territorios Indigenas que aun el
Gobierno de Chavez no ha otorgado Titulos de Propiedad a las Comunidades
Indigenas y en donde se esta aplicando una politica de microcreditos a
diestra y siniestra a todos los indigenas sin ningun tipo de prevision en
cuanto al impacto socio-ambiental de estos "desarrollos" para que ellos
hagan negocios turisticos de restaurantes, posadas y servicios de guias. sin
ningun asomo por promover el uso de tecnologias alternativas de consecucion
de materia prima, produccion y comercializacion de productos y servicios que
se complementen simbioticamente con el fragil ecosistema de la zona y sin
que generen trabajo explotador de los empleados que hoy son solo indigenas
inocentes.
Hasta una segunda bomba de Gasolina piensan hacer dentro de este Parque
Nacional... Segun vemos en la experiencia de la primera bomba de gasolina
que ya existe en este Parque, donde una sola mujer indigena dueña de esta
concesion de gasolina se esta haciendo millonaria y esta explotando hasta
sus mismos primos indigenas como empleados con sueldos minimos como el del
bombero expendedor de gasolina, otro que atiende el kiosko de refrescos,
otros que son mesoneros y cocineros del restaurante, y casi nunca les da
dias libres de descanso -ni los domingos.
Es muy pobre la comunidad donde vive esta señora indigena dueña de la
gasolinera, pero su casa es la unica mansion con muro de piedras todo
alrededor, no hay mas vehiculos en esa comunidad que los que le pertenecen a
esta señora: dos caminetas 4x4 toyotas ultimo modelo con aire acondicionado
y un camion 350 que son de su uso particular y otros carros mas pequeños
que ha regalado a sus hijas. Y por si eso fuera poco, esta bomba expendedora
de gasolina con restaurante y venta de artesanias esta construida a orillas
del rio mas importante de esa zona por ser un sitio turistico (segun la ley
venezolana para proteger el ambiente no pueden haber expendios de gasolina a
menos de 40 metros de cualquier cuerpo de agua). Este tipo de
"desarrollo" es al que se oponen unos cuantos indigenas visionarios de ese
mismo pueblo Pemon que se opusieron en su momento guerreramente tumbando
torres del mega-tendido que le hablé mas arriba.
En el otro extremo de Venezuela, en la frontera opuesta, el Gobierno de
Chavez a firmado el genocidio y "otrocidio" final de los aborigenes Yucpa y
Bari al construir un mega-puerto de aguas profundas para comercializar
mundial, globalizadora y neoliberalmente, el carbon bajo sus tierras
indigenas en las montañas de Perijá. Este puerto necesitara de miles de
obreros para construirse, que al finalizar la obra quedaran desempleados y
desplazados de sus hogares originales al haberse mudado cerca de la
mega-obra al ser contratados como obreros, la mayoria de ellos seguro se
quedaran a vivir como un cordon de miseria viviendo alrededor del puerto
"America", el que esperan que sea EL PUERTO MAS GRANDE DE SURAMERICA!.
Y en otro ambito de ideas, el gobierno de Chavez tambien esta por firmar el
Tratado de Libre Comercio de Las Americas, el ALCA, aunque Chavez disfraza
eso diciendo que no estamos listos para el ALCA "aun".
En fin, le pido Sr. Ramonet que repiense por favor su concepto de Chavez en
Venezuela porque en la practica real tanto el medio ambiente como la
sociedad sufren muchisimo con este gobierno asi como en los anteriores 40
años.
Y su actitud de creer todo lo que le dice Chavez sin buscar comprobacion
independiente real en el terreno de los acontecimientos me extraña en Usted,
se ve muy sospechosa su actitud.
Sabía Usted que los francotiradores hay mucha incertidumbre de que pudieron
haber sido soldados de la Guardia de Honor personal de Chavez, ¿Que tal?,
¿por que lanza Usted en el escrito que copio mas abajo estas aseveraciones
con tanta seguridad sin esperar nisiquiera a oir la opinion de la comision
de la verdad que se ha conformado por diversos sectores del gobierno, las
ONGs, la sociedad civil, etc, para investigar que fue lo que sucedio
realmente ese dia, quienes eran los francotiradores, por ejemplo?
Yo lo invito, Sr. Ramonet, a que vaya en persona y entreviste a los
pescadores de Ancon Iturre, un pequeño pueblo de pescadores que esta
muriendo, a ver que
opinion le dan del "desarrollo bolivarista".
Jose Rafael Leal (Trastor)
-----------------------------------------
fin de las cartas a Ramonet
-----------------------------------------
SORRY FOR THE SPANISH, THIS TWO LETTERS WERE SENT THE FIRST ONE JUST AFTER APRIL'S CUP, AND THE SECOND ONE LATER ON.
Trastor, What happened is that I managed to get a printed copy of EL LIBERTARIO, I am reading it now. This paper have been published since 7 years ago! (says: OUR 7th aniversary edition) , EL LIBERTARIO is a real printed newspaper!, I didn't know it!, it even brings a mini-poster against FTAA... I thought that it was only an on-line internet news site. And opening this printed version of EL LIBERTARIO, I found a critic to RAMONET, I never heard a critic to RAMONET before!, just the two that I wrote for myself hopnestly criticizing RAMONET when I heard about him in VTV-8 ChavezMEDIA.
Trastor
Trastor-Nado
![toxic.jpg](/uploads/2002/12/24/toxic.jpg)
Go in all the marchs you can in the US, please, keep your red berets there in your heads, but with dignity!, knowing that we choose Chavez because is the less bad of the options for venezuela in this mometum.
Trastor
FOR WHAT WE WANT TO BE FREE IF WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DRINK WATER NEITHER TO BREATH AIR IN VENZUELA?????????????????????
Because if you are not free, you will not be able to organize and fight for clean air and water.
In Colombia, where the oligarchy is in charge, they kill environmental activists.
You use the right words but you have misplaced priorities. The house is burning down and you want to check the purity of the water before using it to put out the fire.
By all means, organize. It's a constant struggle. But if you want to be taken seriously, show the ability to set priorities as an organizer: What conditions do you need to organize an environmental movement in a land where people are hungry? Organize for those conditions, and you will be closer to victory.
Emma
B/e/c/a/u/s/e/ i/f y/o/u a/r/e n/o/t f/r/e/e, y/o/u w/i/l/l n/o/t b/e a/b/l/e t/o o/r/g/a/n/i/z/e a/n/d f/i/g/h/t f/o/r c/l/e/a/n a/i/r a/n/d w/a/t/e/r.
We never will be free, it is a big lie.
I/n C/o/l/o/m/b/i/a, w/h/e/r/e t/h/e o/l/i/g/a/r/c/h/y i/s i/n c/h/a/r/g/e, t/h/e/y k/i/l/l e/n/v/i/r/o/n/m/e/n/t/a/l a/c/t/i/v/i/s/t/s.
I am not sayng that we should be on the side of the oligarchy, I am just saying that in Venezuela, where "freedom" is in charge, also they (chavez army) kill environmental activists. I will post in my next posting the history of San Miguel de Jesus Lanz Montilla, an environmental activist killed by a sargent of Chavez army not so long ago ..
Y/o/u u/s/e t/h/e r/i/g/h/t w/o/r/d/s b/u/t y/o/u h/a/v/e m/i/s/p/l/a/c/e/d p/r/i/o/r/i/t/i/e/s. T/h/e h/o/u/s/e i/s b/u/r/n/i/n/g d/o/w/n a/n/d y/o/u w/a/n/t t/o c/h/e/c/k t/h/e p/u/r/i/t/y o/f t/h/e w/a/t/e/r b/e/f/o/r/e u/s/i/n/g i/t t/o p/u/t o/u/t t/h/e f/i/r/e.
There is no water now to stop this fire (how can I check the purity of non-existing water) as i say in my web page, we need to invent the water to stop this fire!, still we have not invented a thing better than "revolution", I mean.. And the priorities are set long ago:
"WE MUST HELP CHAVEZ NOW, ALL FORCES MUST HELP CHAVEZ NOW, BUT JUST BECAUSE HE IS THE LESS BAD OF THE OPTIONS"
B/y a/l/l m/e/a/n/s, o/r/g/a/n/i/z/e. I/t/'s a c/o/n/s/t/a/n/t s/t/r/u/g/g/l/e. B/u/t i/f y/o/u w/a/n/t t/o b/e t/a/k/e/n s/e/r/i/o/u/s/l/y, s/h/o/w t/h/e a/b/i/l/i/t/y t/o s/e/t p/r/i/o/r/i/t/i/e/s a/s a/n o/r/g/a/n/i/z/e/r: W/h/a/t c/o/n/d/i/t/i/o/n/s d/o y/o/u n/e/e/d t/o o/r/g/a/n/i/z/e a/n e/n/v/i/r/o/n/m/e/n/t/a/l m/o/v/e/m/e/n/t i/n a l/a/n/d w/h/e/r/e p/e/o/p/l/e a/r/e h/u/n/g/r/y? O/r/g/a/n/i/z/e f/o/r t/h/o/s/e c/o/n/d/i/t/i/o/n/s, a/n/d y/o/u w/i/l/l b/e c/l/o/s/e/r t/o v/i/c/t/o/r/y.
I WORK ALONE! ALWAYS, i don't like people, I am very anti-social person, I don't even like to talk, I only communicate well when I write...
Trastor
![mvc-004f.jpg](/uploads/2002/12/24/mvc-004f.jpg)
People in other media -CHAVEZmedia also- says it was an "accident", but a bullet direct on the head is not an accident... Also are 4 witness, indians also, after I end helping my wife to cook the "hallacas" (typical xmas. food in venezuela) I will finish the translation of the apropiate report for these two pictures...
Trastor
And don't pay too much attention to nessie. I've read some of his history (in his own words) elsewhere and he has his own problems, too. :)
I hope all sides in Venezuela can show some restraint and stop settling problems by killing, coups, etc.. It seems that there are murders occuring from all sides. Could you describe some of the murders from the anti-Chavez side? Like the murders of anti-Chavez protesters by people who were later found out to be anti-Chavez themselves?
Is there proportional representation in the legislature in Venezuela? What kind of democracy exists there? Why can't the opposition wait until the next scheduled election? What are they afraid of?
San Miguel Jesús Lanz Montilla was always fighting for indigenous peoples rights, since 1996, confronting guvernamental and private enterprises projects like: Turisur, Imataca 1850 decree, construction of the power line to Brasil, National Constituent Assembly, etc...
On this struggle path he was threatned of death by agents of the Venezuelan Army several times together with his indigenous brothers that were protesting for their rights. Miguel has been cold blooded assasinated the day 28 of May 2002, by the hands of a sargent of the army.
What happened there?
I was that day climbing with a friend in the artificial climbing wall I constructed outside my home here in Santa Elena. When Silviano Castro, chief of Kamoiran, arrived in a pick-up truck. He was very nervous and he told me: "Miguel was assasinated!"... When? How? Where is he?. Silviano keep talking: "He is on the back of this pick-up, I need you to take pictures of the hole in his head, I don't trust officials, I need pictures of the hole of the bullet in his head". That is the reason why I have these pictures I sent moments ago.
I took my Mavica and a small 35 mm camera and started taking pictures of Miguel. He was my best student in the computer courses I give to pemon peoples... He was the most smart, the one who , like us posting and reading here, understood the whole problem of globalization and exploitation and human rights, he was simply the best pemon i know... It is a shame that such an excellent environmentalist activist died, my friend, Miguel is dead.
When? Long Ago
There is such a long history that my wife will kill me for being connected to the computer at this moment of 24 of december, but I think is worth.
Lets start with Caldera goverment, the president prior to Chavez, he signed an accord with Brazil in order to sell electricity to Brasil. So the construction of an international mega-power line started. This line passes by so many protected areas and so many different indigenous territories, that at the begining of the construction every body was togheter opposing this power line: ecologists, indigenous of all territories, activists of all kind, everybody was in a compact block fighting against this power line, This works started in 1997, in 1998 Chavez was candidate for the first time to president, he was also in this "compact block" against the power line to Brasil, he promised in his electoral campaign to stop the power line, and even was in accord with indians knocking down towers of this power line, Chavez was in accord with monkey wrenching of mega power lines, but as soon as Chavez was president, everything changed, he militarized the gran sabana in order to stop the aboriginal monkey wrenching, he said that the power line could not be stopped, because venezuela can start bussines with Brazil and probably hope to enter MERCOSUR trade block, and he divided the pemon peoples, he in very obscure meetings conviced some indian chiefs to sign an accord with the goverment to pass the power line.
Of course Miguel, our brother killed, was member of the communities that refused to accept the accord for the power line, so Chavez with this paper signed by some indian chiefs said that the people that are knocking down towers now are only a small group of indians brainwashed by ecologists and foreigner journalists (even a german reporter on the field of pemon struggle was confiscated his passport by authorities and was ordered to leave the country), and he order direct militarization of all Gran Sabana, the territory of Miguel.
As Gran Sabana was militarized, pemon started to protest directly face to face with jungle army soldiers, not National Gards trained to control civilized protests with tear gases, etc, but the indians started to protest against jungle soldiers. One of the reason of this protests was that the army was cutting lots of trees of the forest in order to construct barricades in their field new posts.
And Miguel, togheter with his brothers was threatned by the army, NOW The power line is already finished,
The score is this:
Chavez 1 - Pemon Peoples 0
There is no more militarization now on Gran Sabana, Chavez retired his troops but there is one army base left, and the soldier who assasinated Miguel is of this base, they started to discuss last may 28 when they crossed on Gran Sabana main road, as always discussing for the same, for the military not respecting Indians rights, and Miguel and sargent Ortiz started to fight with their fist. The sargent was wining the fight, Miguel was on the floor almost unconscious and sargent ortiz went to his vehicle, took a gun and returned to Miguel who was almost unconsciuos on the floor and shoot him in the head...
I am very sorry because this was written in a hurry, my wife is shouting me to get out of the computer, and she is the only one in this home with a salary, so she is the boss, bye, MERRY VIOLENT CHRISTMAS IN VENZUELA...
Trastor
Trástor,
I'm listening. I'm sorry I haven't replied yet. It's busy 'round the Narco News Soup Kitchen,too, on this xmas eve, where the warm scent of our traditional holiday dish - Rolled Head of Commercial Media Simulators - wafts through the newsroom.
Nessie, I don't think the Internet is the place to give anyone a hard time about admitting some misanthropic tendencies. This is a medium that brings that out of all of us.
The British correspondent Phil Gunson, who I mentioned in the interview above, wrote Narco News a letter that railed, "The trouble with the internet is that it gives ignorant loudmouths a platform to address the whole world."
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article572.html
Oh, right, you SF IMC people like to read it on a white page:
http://www.narconews.com/print.php3?ArticleID=572
Now, I don't think that is any "trouble" at all. I think greater truths are arrived at by listening to anyone who shows he or she has something to say. Trástor definitely beats the "there's no anarchism but MY anarchism" in terms of, what did somebody above call it? Coherence?
Trástor clearly has something to say, he's thought about it, he's investigated, he's not one of these embittered gringo usual suspects ranting some fundamentalist view of anarchism while demonstrating profound First World oversocialized thinking - an myopia to problems way down South - in their imagined radical gestures.
On one of the message boards linked to in the threat above, somebody said, and I'm paraphrasing, and perhaps not listening to that person as studiously because I was laughing so hard, but the way I heard it was "this Nessie interview with Al is the worst thing to happen to anarchism since September 11, 2001."
And I thought, "gee, really?" I would think the story Trástor is telling about this mining struggle rates fairly high above that other anarchist's tragedy-of-the-year.
So Trástor: I'm listening, and thinking, and as soon as I have the time I am going to look more deeply into the battle you describe.
There is certainly no inconsistency in fighting an environmental battle within Venezuela against its government and opposing coups d'etat.
Right now, while the coup d'etat is being attempted (although in its very evident death throes) - and I think, from your words, you agree that it is very frightening - please excuse me for not so far having the time to respond to each of your points as fast as I'd like.
I've given you an email address to which you can send gobs of material and once the sky is clear I'll be looking into that story and asking a lot of questions of all kinds of people.
Meanwhile, I and others could get to it much sooner if you pick up a shovel and start helping to put out the "fire" described above. There may not be water, but there's always dirt. We have to be innovative in emergencies.
Al
BURNED LIES of CHAVEZ-MEDIA Simulators (I already have all the staples ready), LULA MEDIA simulators (if they exist), and every other simulator around who crosses my mind...
And I'll hope by new year's eve maybe we both got a real-better-sharper picture of Venezuela in english for gringos to read.
Trástor
And yes with the nutshell, I have been reading and posting in email lists and I have been 4 years sending emails with news, not mine -the most of it forwarded from somewhere else-, and the ending of all this was the failed organization of the "No Frontiers Santa Elena Encounter", ( http://mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz/sinfronteras ) In which I was very disapointed with Lula-Chavez politic followers present that day there...
So disapointed I am from Lula-Chavez situation that I made an electronic hara-kiri, I have decided not to post and not to participate in email lists anymore, I will only write my own web pages here, http://mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz
So, this long list of postings by trastor here in this thread of Al Giordanos' attempt to destruct my friends at El LIbertario newspaper will be perhaps the only place I will post ever in my life from now on, Hello Giordano, meet your new friend trastor... And beware of chavez, please, I command you to listen well when you start asking poisonous questions to your allies in Venezuela, make pressure to them to tell "not just the half you want to hear"...
Trastor
Al: You give TOO MUCH benefit of the doubt to trastornado. There is a coup attempt going on and he says all he wants to do is follow you around? I treid to follow your advice and listen to him, but he lost me with that one. CAREFUL AL, he could become like that psycho-asshole in L.E.S. who stalked your girlfriend because he felt rejected by you. Al, you know who I am, I always tell you: BEWARE OF GLOMMERS. You're probably the only person who was nice to Trastornado all year and NOW LOOK!
Your long line of question marks caused the comments page to not wordwrap. Hopefully the Indymedia staff will fix this longtime bug by the time you read this.
Al Giordano criticized a particular aspect of an article (from El Libertario?) that was reposted on A-Infos.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1550624_comment.php
I criticize the article for a different aspect. For this line from it below supporting Marxism. I think Marxism is antidemocratic to the extreme:
"If only this were a revolution, albeit a Marxist one. We would have different angle of opposition, criticism, confrontation, and even of construction.. But, regrettably, it is just more of the same thing, with some advances and many setbacks."
Trastor,
Please check out the last half of this Al Giordano news page. It is the section titled: "Mid-December: The Oil Sector Sabotage"
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article571.html
Have you seen this environmental info in the Venezuelan media? About the threatened eco-terrorism by the oil company executives who are the strike leaders? I copied that section below:
------------------
There was, this month, one sector of oil company executives that claimed they were on “strike,” but who in fact have spent this month actively working to lock-out rank-and-file employees and, according to their own public statements, to facilitate the sabotage, including eco-terrorism, of oil facilities.
According to public records at the Venezuela Secretary of Mining and Energy (MEM, in its Spanish initials), these were the annual salaries of the 22 major oil “strike” leaders, including their bonuses, paid vacations, and other benefits, at the trough of the state-owned oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela, or PdVSA:
Edgar Paredes makes 837 million bolivars a year ($643,000 U.S. dollars).
The lowest paid of these 22 ringleaders, Luis Ramírez, makes 310 million bolivars a year ($238,000 U.S. dollars).
The highest paid, Karl Mazeika, makes 990 million bolivars a year ($761,000).
The average annual salary of these 22 “strike” leaders is $426,000 U.S. dollars a year; almost 100 times the per capita income of the average Venezuelan citizen of $4,760 dollars per year. In the Venezuelan economy, $426,000 gives somebody more buying power than people who make millions of dollars a year in the United States.
Check out the rest of their salaries in the Venezuelan currency of Bolivars (at 1,300 bolivars to the dollar), here they are, the annual booties of the oppressed “vanguard” of The Strike That Wasn’t:
[long list snipped out]
Each of these oil executives, of course, had their own team of highly-paid middle managers underneath them: controlling the paperwork, the computers, the hiring and firing, and all other aspects of the company.
In recent weeks, they locked out the workers, and installed their own men at key strategic points where sabotage has been committed to facilities under their watch.
The “opposition” complains about graffiti on the wall of a Commercial TV station and calls it “vandalism” or “violence.” These guys, meanwhile, have presided over the destruction of pumps, pipelines, tankers and other ships, trucks, and other key points in the flow of oil from the ground to the consumer, including to the United States.
If they had tried anything like this inside the United States, we would see the White House calling them terrorists, locking them up in Guantanamo Bay, and suing them for the millions of dollars of losses that they have caused. Some of the members of the “oil-igarchy” have made public statements that some oil supplies have been contaminated, and some facilities have been booby-trapped to cause environmental disaster if they are re-started.
Between the oil drilling facility and the gas pump there are many stops along the road. Shut down or sabotage one of those points, and you shut down the entire pipeline. That has certainly happened at various points. But to hear the U.S. and British press correspondents, the language of distortion always uses these events to claim that there is somehow universal compliance with the strike at every point in the pipeline. That is not the case, nor has it been the case at any point during December 2002. ...
Hey Al... if you are reading this... did you flirt with Trastor's wife or something?
I managed to mend my own mistake (sorry again, is the first time I post here) by marking and copying the entire text and pasting it to a new email document, or word porcessor document, then it can be readed, if still don't function, try pasting it to a simple .txt document .
Trastor
I am speaking in the name of mother earth, maybe some people say that other people saying they speak in the name of mother earth are fools or whatever their minds can produce to designate this people that says that they speak in the name of mother earth, but , listen, in reality I speak in the name of mother earth...
Trastor
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1554210.php
I finally found the money trail. And now I understand the corporate coup organizers' motives. FOLLOW THE MONEY!
Today only 20% of Venezuela oil money goes to the state. 80% disappears. In 1974 it was the reverse. I have not seen these 2 facts anywhere else in the world's media. At least in English. Please forward widely. This is the reason for the continual coup attempts this year in Venezuela. The corporate media and the corporate coup plotters want to overthrow the elected government to prevent or quickly overturn the January 2003 implementation of economic legislation that will change all of this.
In example, they wanted to construct an airport in the middle of protected wildlife areas, but all towns beside this future airport still lacks proper sanitation, sewers, etc... here you can read something written by me long ago that speaks about this airport (My real name is Rafael Leal):
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb1999/1999-02-05-03.asp
BUT, now some 'strike-coupist' use the environmental problems to get people more angry against Chavez, like the posibility of a super-tanker of gasoline sinking on maracaibo lake, or other environmental disaster that could be product of these days crisis in the oil sector...
SO my advice is to be very careful with enviironment news from venezuel at this moment, trust any environment news from venezuela now at your own risk.
I am speaking here in the name of mother earth in reality, and the reason I did it was because, believe me, the only newspaper that ever published the article of Miguel Lanz assasinated and not as an accident was EL LIBERTARIO, so they deserve SOLIDARITY from me when somebody tries in a very unjust way to destroy them.
If Giordano didn't attacked in the way he did it the only journalists that cooperated close to pemon peoples in all these years..., Then nobody here would had heard about me, never... I am not attacking Giordano, not anyone, nobody, I am only defending my allies of EL LIBERTARIO, but to do it I need to use all my force!, imagine: Giordano is very well know and me not, he got background and me not, he has reported from several struggles around latin america, and me only from venezuela, in order to help my friends with the small I have at hand I need to talk like I talk and do all these trouble here in the first place.
SO, again, it is very complex the situation in venezuela now, I have decided to get in a nutshell because I don't believe nothing no more, the environmental problems exists, but those on the economic power in venezuela are using the environmental problems now to attack chavez on the media, and to cause panic on the peoples living close to super-tankers, refineries, oil ships ports, etc, etc.
Also it is true that the situation can go tragic at any moment, with militars using weapons aboard super-tankers, etc, by the same caos in the situation, maybe an accident can occur, an oil spill, etc, but again:
Please, don't get Chavez out of president now, wait until a real substitute may appear.
Trastor
P.S. Here is the link to the article of the airport in venezuela:
EVERYTHING, IT IS MY VITAL EXPERIENCE, AND I AM REMEMBERING HERE FOR ALL.
JUSTICE FOR ALL! , not only for chavistas
PEACE FOR ALL! not only for the ones who rest in peace!
And maybe Al Giordano who seems to know everything, can tell us what
happened with the April 11 deads, Chavez is making pressure to speed up
investigations of recent Plaza Altamira deads, but what happened with the
investigations of April 11
deads?
??????.....I want to put here a question mark for every venezuelan alive (still), because every venezuelan need that question to be answered in order to start peace... BUT this web site does not allow doing so, so please imagine a question mark for every venezuelan...
IT IS A BIG QUESTION, I MEAN.
Trastor
P.S. Also I will get the chance now, thanks to all this mess of the questions marks, to reformulate this posting: INSTEAD OF READING: "maybe Al Giordano who seems to know everything" is more perfect if it says: "maybe Al Giordano who seems to INVESTIGATE everything"... and following the text above...
Blind belief in an ideology does that to people. They think their's is the only true vision, while we all are deluded idiots. Let them live their fantasy.
In other words:
Mejor deja que hablen su carreta ellos solitos, que igual no aportan nada a la realidad por más que les respondas y les preguntes.
Trastor...
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1554210.php
I finally found the money trail. And now I understand the corporate coup organizers' motives. FOLLOW THE MONEY!
-----------------------------
Carlos Mendoza Potella used to post his 'oil notes' in the list of ecology and environment of venezuela [LEA VENEZUELA], and those emails regularly sent were very interesting.
For a petroleum expert sending emails teaching environmentalists about oil bussiness in venezuela was really brilliant!.
My best words for Carlos Mendoza Potellá
Trastor
http://mipagina.cantv.net/interfaz/amazonica/pdvsa2.pps
(+/- 80 kb)
Trastor
THAT IS TRUE, BUT IS LESS BAD THAN BUSH KNOCKING CHAVEZ !
I am trying to help venezuela now, but how can I help somebody knowing that everything stated up there is true... Thinkin... Thinkin... I will think how, I promise, wait, please...
Trastor.
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb1999/1999-02-05-03.asp
I have seen this before:
"The USB study found the project is completely off-target for preserving the environment or improving the economy. But as this sober study was not liked by CORPOTURISMO, they decided not to pay USB for the study. Last year TecnoConsult was chosen to do a new impact study. ... TecnoConsult said they would reduce the tourist impact at Morrocoy National Park by raising the park fee to US$14, a move that would reduce the number of Venezuelan tourists visiting the park since Venezuelans are living through a bad moment in the national economy. "
Sounds like another one of these foreign tourist traps that rape the land in order to gather some money for the profits of big hotel chains, and taxes to corrupt governments. I now better understand your cynicism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: AP Online
Date: 12/26/2002 02:37
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (0417 words)
Document ID: EA20021226320000029
Subject(s): Central and South America
Author(s): JORGE RUEDA, Associated Press Writer
Document Type: Articles & General info
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strike Parches Venezuela Beer Drinkers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Thursday, December 26, 2002 2:37 AM EST
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- The general strike against President Hugo Chavez has cut not only vital supplies of oil, but also another precious liquid in Venezuela: beer.
Since the strike began Dec. 2, cutting into the beer supplies as the nation's top producer stopped brewing, beer-thirsty Venezuelans have had to turn to whiskey and other alternatives.
``Right now, we drunks are drinking the good stuff,'' Jose Gonzalez, a retired government worker, joked after buying a $28 bottle of whiskey. ``But if the strike continues, we are going to end up broke.''
It's a bit of a sacrifice for beer-loving Venezuelans, who like to socialize over a glass in neighborhood Spanish-style taverns or have a cold one to combat the tropical heat.
According to Cerveceria Regional, a Venezuelan subsidiary of Brazil's Brahma brewery, Venezuela is the No. 3 beer producer in Latin America.
Per capita, Venezuelans are the biggest beer consumers in Latin America, drinking an average of 20 gallons annually. Mexico comes next at 13 gallons; Brazil, 12 gallons.
But into the strike's fourth week, beer is becoming hard if not impossible to find in Caracas liquor stores and supermarkets. It is still available in many bars and restaurants, but selections have shrunk.
Merchants complain their profits will be as flat as day-old beer during what should be a peak season.
``Normally, December is the best month of the year for us. It's when we sell the most, for parties,'' said Marco Dos Santos, a Caracas liquor store owner. ``We still have rum, whiskey, and wines, but they could be gone in a few days and we'll have to close.''
Dos Santos added that no products have arrived at his shop in two weeks. Prospects of replenishment soon were dim.
Empresas Polar, Venezuela's biggest brewer and one of the world's largest, stopped production to support the strike.
Soldiers recently raided a Polar warehouse looking for other products, such as cornflower and cooking oil, after Chavez ordered authorities to distribute hoarded products deemed essential to the nation's welfare.
Beer isn't on the list, and the soldiers only found thousands of bottles waiting to be filled. Polar said it is taking legal action to prevent more raids.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Havana, Dec 25, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Cuba has accused the Venezuelan opposition of lying about claims that the Cuban mariners working on a state oil tanker were working for the island's government.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Agencia EFE
Date: 12/25/2002 17:49
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (236 words)
Document ID: FC20021225220000020
Subject(s): Efe; Business; Canada; Cuba; Government; Labor; Marine; Oil; Politics; President; Strike; Unions; Venezuela
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cuba: Venezuelan opposition lying about Cuban role in strike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Wednesday, December 25, 2002 5:49 PM EST
Havana, Dec 25, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Cuba has accused the Venezuelan opposition of lying about claims that the Cuban mariners working on a state oil tanker were working for the island's government.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Aymee Hernandez said in a press release that Arturo Escobar Capote, 51, captain of the Venezuelan tanker Bora Bora, and Carlos de Jesus Valdes Acosta, 53, have no ties to Havana and sought political asylum in Canada in 1993 and 1972, respectively.
"Escobar Capote and Valdes Acosta emigrated from Cuba many years ago, as did thousands of others ... who live in Venezuela without any links or contact with the Cuban government," she said.
Hernandez said Venezuelan opposition leaders Carlos Ortega, head of the country's largest labor union (CTV), and Carlos Fernandez, president of the Fedecamaras business association, "have lied again" by claiming that the two Cubans were communist agents.
Earlier this month, the Cuban Embassy in Caracas issued a statement insisting that "no Cuban professional is working for the Venezuelan oil industry or merchant marine."
An opposition-led general strike begun Dec. 2 and later joined by oil workers and tanker captains has strangled the crucial state-run oil industry. The work stoppage was called in an attempt to pressure President Hugo Chavez to resign.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARACAS, Dec 25, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Venezuelans spent their Christmas Wednesday amid a fuel and food shortage triggered by the four-week- long nationwide general strike staged by the opposition.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Xinhua News Agency
Date: 12/25/2002 20:48
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (342 words)
Document ID: FC20021225870000023
Subject(s): XIN; Consumer; Economy; Food; Gasoline; Oil; President; Recession; Strike; Trade; Venezuela
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Venezuelans spend Christmas amid fuel, food shortage
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Wednesday, December 25, 2002 8:48 PM EST
CARACAS, Dec 25, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Venezuelans spent their Christmas Wednesday amid a fuel and food shortage triggered by the four-week- long nationwide general strike staged by the opposition.
As the strike crippled the oil industry, pillar of the country' s economy, the oil output sank to a level of less than 15 percent of the normal with daily production plummeting to below 200,000 barrels from November's 3.1 million barrels.
The strike has reduced Venezuela from the world's fifth biggest oil exporter to a leading oil consumer. Car drivers in the country are waking up to the incredible reality of the national gas shortage.
Long lines are seen at gas stations around the country as nervous motorists rush to fill up their gas tanks. Many pumps have run dry while others are besieged by desperate Venezuelans.
The shutdown has also weighed on basic food supply. About 92 percent of food companies around the country suspended activities. Lack of fuel has significantly cut the transportation of food. Food supplies in some cities have reached a critical stage.
To ease the food shortage, the government of President Hugo Chavez has taken measures to help food companies resume production.
The state-run news organization Venpres quoted Ramon Rosales, minister of Production and Trade, as saying that food companies in states of Carabobo, Aragua, Lara, Guarico and Portuguesa had began operation.
Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Coordination said in a communique that there would be no Christmas truce and vowed to press ahead with the strike until Chavez agrees to hold an early referendum on his rule.
The Democratic Coordination admitted that the fuel and food scarcity "could lead us to a delicate situation."
"Year 2002 will undoubtedly have no Christmas and year 2003 will be a one of freedom," it said.
The opposition has blamed Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and whose presidential term expires in 2007, for plunging the country into the worst recession in more than a decade.
Trastor
I beat the crap out of the Democrats at every opportunity. Maybe if there was someone in the Democratic Party in the USA as progressive (relatively) as Chavez I might compromise a little and not attack the Democrats as much.
After the coup attempts are over we can see if Chavez does better things for the environment. If he doesn't, then we can both beat up on him. :)
Hi Everybody,
Very rapidly...
1. Trástor, you don't need any non-aggression pact with me because I have not been aggressive with you, nor do I plan to be!
I don't recommend casting yourself as knight in shining armor to defend the honor of that damsel in distress magazine: First, because I don't plan on offering any apology to those people. Second, because apologies are not made - at least by me - to somehow placate another party who makes a threat! and, Third, because if those Libertario mag folks want to defend themselves, my email address is above, I'll be happy to discuss it with them in Spanish or English.
I don't deal with them or anyone through third parties. Sorry. Neither you nor Cesar Gaviria can mediate this one! If the Libertario gang are really anarchists, they can stand up for themselves and answer to their own behavior and critiques of it. Don't appoint yourself as their "State."
2. "Samuel Vargas" and "Profr" make their blanket statements - "Giordano is a bad journalist... Giordano is a bad anarchist" - but as is typical of these sorts of unsubstantiated broad-brush statements, they make them anonymously and without offering any meat - not a single argument or fact - to back up such statements.
Critiques can certainly be made of my journalism (or my anarchism), but here's a big hint, boys: Substantiate your allegations. I like a good argument as much as anybody, but let's have something to argue about rather than your lame characterizations. Who appointed either of you guys as arbiters? You're still hiding behind psuedonyms! Cowards!
(I repeat: Who would want to share a foxhole with such featherweights?)
3. 24 days after the Strike That Wasn't began, Associated Press finally acknowledges what we've reported all along. This report, below, is from AP this morning. It took three weeks to beat the most basic facts out of them!
If Narco News' reporting is so wrong, and the Commercial Media's is so right, how come they have to keep coming closer to our set of facts as the scrutiny increases?
I think I hear the Fat Lady about to sing...
salud y abrazo,
Al Giordano
Chavez's Popularity Holds On Among Venezuela's Poor
Thursday, December 26, 2002
CARACAS, Venezuela — Gasoline pumps are drying up and food supplies in many places are dwindling, but President Hugo Chavez still has broad support — especially among Venezuela's poor.
Chavez's foes launched a general strike on Dec. 2 to force him to resign or allow early elections, before a possible recall vote in August.
They are betting that strangling Venezuela's oil-dependent economy will motivate Venezuelans to demand his resignation or force a vote.
But millions not widely reported on by private media, especially among Venezuela's poor and working class, insist they won't allow a return of a corrupt two-party system that Chavez displaced in 1999.
"He can't leave us. It would be terrible," said Beatriz Nunez, 51, a Caracas storekeeper who has ignored the strike led by organized labor, business leaders, civic groups and many private media.
Nunez was among those who elected Chavez to power by a landslide in 1998 and re-elected him in 2000. They still see the former paratrooper as their only hope for change in a country where the riches generated by vast oil reserves have failed to reach the masses.
An estimated 80 percent of Venezuela's 24 million people live in poverty. Chavez campaigned on a promise to eradicate a 40-year, corrupt democratic system that rewarded loyalists and shortchanged the poor.
I am calling you to apologize not because they said it, the persons you say I am defending, but because what they said is very accurate information for a better-sharp-complete vision about Venezuela. That's all: I AM DEFENDING ARGUMENTS OF EL LIBERTARIO, NOT PERSONS OF EL LIBERTARIO, my friend Al, but for you, tunnel vision minded seems to me, those arguments comes with the name of "EL LIBERTARIO"
And you must apologize to get again the name of this newspaper up...And since you are not collaborative, I need to make more pressure: you as a bad child must promise not do it again!. Not for the persons, for the kind of information that they publish there, is very accurate, I mean, and yours is much biased to Chavez and the poors, when everything is a big lie, Chavez is a liar, and Bush is taking advantage of it now to mediate middle and high class people to dream of Venezuela without Chavez in order for USA to control Venezuelan oil and other natural reserves and workforce ready to be exploited.
Plase, people all, don't pay attention to Giordano, I will need to create a complete anti-giordano web site if he continues to play like this: COOPERATION GIORDANO, that's all I ask. Because when chavez is gone, in 2 or 5 or 20 years, whenever, EL LIBERTARIO could be there still with high accurate info about venezuela... And if some innocent person reach this interview with you in internet then, it will be of no good for Mother Earth if by mistake that poor soul believes you and not me reading our discussions, that's all, Al, please, cooperate, read again el libertario news, the link is here:
![cpt3.jpg](/uploads/2002/12/26/cpt3.jpg)
PEMON TUPONKEN CENTER FOR COOPERATION
![cpt5.jpg](/uploads/2002/12/26/cpt5.jpg)
DON'T KILL ME, I WANT TO COOPERATE FOR YOUR SURVIVAL TOO!
Also, I think your true biases (whether you know it or not) are showing. You said:
"The poors, we must be in solidarity with them, Giordano is true, but Chavez developments ar of no good for poors neither, Chavistas are not being solidaries with Mother Earth, and this is a great incongreuncy, since we must LOVE MOTHER EARTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!LOVE, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE FOR OUR MOTHER EARTH!!!!!!!!!"
I suggest you read this article from someone who lives in Venezuela:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2546
Excerpt:
The government's health care and education policies have benefited the poor more than the middle class because the middle class tends to rely on private health care and education. In contrast, the poor have benefited from the institution of universal health care for the first time in Venezuela's history, even if that health care is relatively miserable, at least it is more accessible to the poor than it has ever been. The situation is similar with education. The government has introduced thousands of "Bolivarian" schools throughout the country, which provide three free full meals per day to all students; something they would never be guaranteed if they stayed at home. As a result, one million new students have been matriculated in schools, who were never part of the school system before.
One of the most significant achievements of the new constitution is that it permanently broke the two-party system of Venezuela and has thus enabled the participation of large sectors of society that were traditionally excluded from government before. Important in this regard are the constitution's inclusion of women, indigenous peoples, and homosexuals, who in the earlier constitution had few real rights. Again, these are changes that, at best, the vast majority of the middle class feels quite indifferent about.
Another area that is high on the Chavez government's agenda, but which leaves the middle class out, is land reform. The government has introduced two kinds of land reform programs-rural and urban. The rural land reform has caught quite a bit of attention and its passage in November 2001 was arguably the beginning of the opposition's campaign against the president. The land reform law is essentially designed to put idle land into production and to redistribute idle land to landless peasants if landowners refuse to put their land into production. The basic purpose is to both create greater social justice and to increase the country's agricultural production. This program is also supplemented by a wide variety of agricultural credit and training programs.
The urban land reform program, in contrast, is designed to confer ownership titles to land which the urban poor currently occupy illegally through land invasions and to help them improve their communities through self-governance. The urban reform program sets up land committees of up to 200 families in the poor neighborhoods that help measure plots of land, determine communal property, negotiate with government for services such as water and electricity, and create a communal identity. This democratization of property is to be combined with a democratization of local governance through participatory planning processes for local projects, such as has been spearheaded in parts of Brazil under the Labor Party there.
Other major government programs that primarily benefit the poor, but not the middle class are the public housing program and the micro-credit programs. Related to this, the government recently announced the creation of a new "Social Economy" ministry. This ministry would support workplace democracy, especially the creation of cooperatives and other social justice projects, such as the micro-credit programs.
A policy that directly hurts the interests especially of the upper middle class is the government's effort to collect income taxes for the first time in Venezuelan history. Only those with incomes in the top 20% or so are required to pay income taxes.
Also, I think your true biases (whether you know it or not) are showing. You said:
"The poors, we must be in solidarity with them, Giordano is true, but Chavez developments ar of no good for poors neither, Chavistas are not being solidaries with Mother Earth, and this is a great incongreuncy, since we must LOVE MOTHER EARTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!LOVE, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE FOR OUR MOTHER EARTH!!!!!!!!!"
Chavez is helping the poor. You only barely admit this, if at all. I suggest you read this article from someone else who lives in Venezuela:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2546
Excerpt:
The government's health care and education policies have benefited the poor more than the middle class because the middle class tends to rely on private health care and education. In contrast, the poor have benefited from the institution of universal health care for the first time in Venezuela's history, even if that health care is relatively miserable, at least it is more accessible to the poor than it has ever been. The situation is similar with education. The government has introduced thousands of "Bolivarian" schools throughout the country, which provide three free full meals per day to all students; something they would never be guaranteed if they stayed at home. As a result, one million new students have been matriculated in schools, who were never part of the school system before.
One of the most significant achievements of the new constitution is that it permanently broke the two-party system of Venezuela and has thus enabled the participation of large sectors of society that were traditionally excluded from government before. Important in this regard are the constitution's inclusion of women, indigenous peoples, and homosexuals, who in the earlier constitution had few real rights. Again, these are changes that, at best, the vast majority of the middle class feels quite indifferent about.
Another area that is high on the Chavez government's agenda, but which leaves the middle class out, is land reform. The government has introduced two kinds of land reform programs-rural and urban. The rural land reform has caught quite a bit of attention and its passage in November 2001 was arguably the beginning of the opposition's campaign against the president. The land reform law is essentially designed to put idle land into production and to redistribute idle land to landless peasants if landowners refuse to put their land into production. The basic purpose is to both create greater social justice and to increase the country's agricultural production. This program is also supplemented by a wide variety of agricultural credit and training programs.
The urban land reform program, in contrast, is designed to confer ownership titles to land which the urban poor currently occupy illegally through land invasions and to help them improve their communities through self-governance. The urban reform program sets up land committees of up to 200 families in the poor neighborhoods that help measure plots of land, determine communal property, negotiate with government for services such as water and electricity, and create a communal identity. This democratization of property is to be combined with a democratization of local governance through participatory planning processes for local projects, such as has been spearheaded in parts of Brazil under the Labor Party there.
Other major government programs that primarily benefit the poor, but not the middle class are the public housing program and the micro-credit programs. Related to this, the government recently announced the creation of a new "Social Economy" ministry. This ministry would support workplace democracy, especially the creation of cooperatives and other social justice projects, such as the micro-credit programs.
A policy that directly hurts the interests especially of the upper middle class is the government's effort to collect income taxes for the first time in Venezuelan history. Only those with incomes in the top 20% or so are required to pay income taxes.
![cpt9.jpg](/uploads/2002/12/26/cpt9.jpg)
As I told before, any good argument here to convince people could be seen as an oportunity now in venezuela to take the flag of the environment in order to help the "strike cupists", but as soon as I feel free again to talk properly, I will talk.
For now only another message from Mother Earth to Poors in venezuela now enjoying better life thanks to Chavez:
The Bat is saying to all poors in venezuela: "help me!, me too want to live"
Trastor
I do say Al is a bad anarchist because he is hectoring and bullying anarchists to turn away from the consensus since 1937,that is that the move to support government was a big mistake.Now maybe Al and possibly Noam Chompsky want to increase the power of the state.I would argue that is wrong and ought to be resisted.This is the second time I make this point and I will argue from fact on this point as long as Al is not to busy.I say Noam is a bad anarchist for seeking to 'widen the floor of the cage.'but Al can debate this whenever he is free.I try and avoid saying you are with us or against us if I can.
The other charge I mentioned against Al,as an anarchist,is that he uses smear attacks on a small group,El Libertario.Thankfully he botchs the job somewhat with hyperbole and contradictions.From witchfinding to Stalinist show trials to McCartheyism,this sort of thing has happened before.It makes Al a bad anarchist in my book but again,Al can respond at his leisure,(and in private if he likes.)
profrv is my nom de guerre,not a psuedonym but a quick search can locate me in meatspace if you want to call me by my christian name.(Matthew X) Also I am not a 'arbiter' by no means,thank you for a big laugh.
While I am here,'Trastor',when you said this..."..."...the only newspaper that ever published the article of Miguel Lanz assasinated and not as an accident was EL LIBERTARIO, so they deserve SOLIDARITY from me when somebody tries in a very unjust way to destroy them.
If Giordano didn't attacked in the way he did it the only journalists that cooperated close to pemon peoples in all these years..., Then nobody here would had heard about me, never... I am not attacking Giordano, not anyone, nobody, I am only defending my allies of EL LIBERTARIO, but to do it I need to use all my force!,..."
You have my solidarity and support on this issue Trastor,I will defend anarchists like El Libertario,(and anarchism) to the bitter end.
by profrv@(nospam)fuckmicrosoft.com • Thursday December 26, 2002 at 01:56 PM
I stand by all I wrote and my address is on it.When I first responded I sent the URL to Al and Nessie.I don't recall making a blanket statement that Al was a bad journalist,(though I would say that of Nessie and offer proofs) I admire much narco news and have disseminated it onward.
I do say Al is a bad anarchist because he is hectoring and bullying anarchists to turn away from the consensus since 1937,that is that the move to support government was a big mistake.Now maybe Al and possibly Noam Chompsky want to increase the power of the state.I would argue that is wrong and ought to be resisted.This is the second time I make this point and I will argue from fact on this point as long as Al is not to busy.I say Noam is a bad anarchist for seeking to 'widen the floor of the cage.'but Al can debate this whenever he is free.I try and avoid saying you are with us or against us if I can. "
Blah, Blah, Blah.
YOu are the self-serving and self-righteous "Anarchist," Profrv boy.
The Venezuelan people are currently engaged in literally the struggle of their lives to determine the fate of their nation--an important struggle which will
have a profound impact on the political resistance to the American Empire in general and its capitalist "market reforms" in particular throughout Latin America and the world--and ALL YOU CAN THINK AND WHINE ABOUT IS THE FACT THAT POOR LITTLE ANARCHISTS WERE CRITICIZED IN THIS ARTICLE?!
FUck the hell off. You are a good example of why Western "Progressives"--Anarchists or otherwise--are so rightfully despised and hated around the world. You people are nothing more than political opportunists and shysters who are only interested in pimping off of and coopting other people Political struggles to cynically push YOUR OWN POLITICAL AGENDA AND IDEOLOGY.
Who gives a flying fuck about your Anarcho-bullshit ideology, your Fundamentalist -like adherence to anti-State ideology, and your laughable street theater tactics.
DJ. US Embassy In Venezuela Shuts Trade, Ag Offices On Strike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARACAS, Dec 26, 2002 (ODJ Select via COMTEX) -- (Dow Jones)--The U.S. embassy in Venezuela closed its Trade and Agriculture offices as part of a general staff reduction due to the ongoing crisis related to the 25-day-old general strike against President Hugo Chavez's leadership, an embassy spokesman said Thursday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: FWN Financial News
Date: 12/26/2002 14:12
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (306 words)
Document ID: FD20021226740000013
Subject(s): Fws; Agriculture; Dow Jones; Gross Domestic Product; Inflation; Oil; Politics; President; Prices; Recall; Strike; Trade; Travel; Unemployment; Venezuela
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DJ. US Embassy In Venezuela Shuts Trade, Ag Offices On Strike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Thursday, December 26, 2002 2:12 PM EST
CARACAS, Dec 26, 2002 (ODJ Select via COMTEX) -- (Dow Jones)--The U.S. embassy in Venezuela closed its Trade and Agriculture offices as part of a general staff reduction due to the ongoing crisis related to the 25-day-old general strike against President Hugo Chavez's leadership, an embassy spokesman said Thursday.
But it's not a permanent closure, and the offices will be reopened when the situation returns to normal, the spokesman said.
The U.S. issued a travel advisory about Venezuela Dec. 10 and pulled most of its nonessential staff out of the country due to increasing political uncertainty which many fear could result in violence.
Many other countries have done the same.
Strike leaders are demanding that Chavez agree to calling elections within 30 days if he loses a Feb. 2 nonbinding referendum on whether he should remain in office.
Chavez has thus far maintained that the constitution only requires him to accept the results of a possible recall referendum next August, the midpoint of his term.
Chavez's critics blame his left-leaning policies for the country's deepening economic crisis, despite sky-high oil prices. Gross domestic product contracted 6.4% in the first nine months of this year, alongside 17% unemployment and 30% annualized inflation sparked by a nearly 50% devaluation of the bolivar ($1=VEB1,388.50) earlier this year. The currency has strengthened a bit since then, mostly due to central bank efforts.
Chavez, first elected in 1998 on promises to eradicate corruption and inequality, has blamed the recession on an "economic coup" by his opponents.
He was briefly ousted by the military in April after protests against his rule escalated into violence, but loyalists reinstated him two days later.
-By Jehan Senaratna, Dow Jones Newswires; 58414 249 6821; jehan.senaratna [at] dowjones.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Caracas, Dec 26, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- The Venezuelan opposition plans to end the year with additional demonstrations to press for the resignation of President Hugo Chavez, while the government continues its efforts to gradually reactivate the vital oil industry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Agencia EFE
Date: 12/26/2002 14:40
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (463 words)
Document ID: FD20021226850000043
Subject(s): Efe; Constitution; Democracy; Gasoline; Military; Newspaper; Oil; President; Resignation; Security; Strike; Takeover; Venezuela
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Protests and gasoline shortages mark the year's end in Venezuela
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Thursday, December 26, 2002 2:40 PM EST
Caracas, Dec 26, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- The Venezuelan opposition plans to end the year with additional demonstrations to press for the resignation of President Hugo Chavez, while the government continues its efforts to gradually reactivate the vital oil industry.
The opposition alliance known as the Democratic Coordinator organized four simultaneous marches for Thursday and others for Friday as a prelude to the "great takeover of Caracas."
Miranda state Gov. Enrique Mendoza, a member of the opposition Social Christian Party, said Thursday that the march, planned for the Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas, would likely take place soon.
Mendoza said organizers hoped to gather "2.5 million demonstrators opposed to Chavez" from across the country for the "megamarch" to press for the president's resignation or early elections, which are not provided for in the current constitution.
The government has warned that no demonstration would be allowed within the 200-meter (656-foot) "security zone" around the presidential palace, where military checkpoints were set up two weeks ago.
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters the government was forced to establish the security zone in the wake of the coup that ousted Chavez for 48 hours on April 11.
The coup was preceded by social unrest near Miraflores that resulted in the deaths of at least 19 people, including Chavez supporters and opponents.
Those responsible for the killings have not been identified.
Constant street protests are being used by the opposition to promote the indefinite general strike, which is now in its 25th day.
The strike has severely affected the country's vital oil industry, and the government is "making a great effort" to return operations to normal at state-owned oil giant PDVSA, which has been affected by "significant" paralysis, according to a terse statement issued by the oil company's chief, Ali Rodriguez.
On Dec. 4, an unspecified number of PDVSA's top executives and several captains from its tanker fleet joined the general strike that had begun two days before.
The strike is affecting the Venezuelan people, who are trying to deal with fuel shortages and beginning to worry about the economic consequences of the protests in a country where crude sales account for at least 50 percent of total income.
Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest exporter of crude.
Strike leader Juan Fernandez said Thursday that official contingency plans were just quick fixes.
Fernandez, who was fired two weeks ago, complained about the alleged recent dismissal of 90 top PDVSA executives and said the strike had been called "to save (Venezuelan) democracy."
According to some newspaper reports, PDVSA's losses during the strike have surpassed $1.35 billion.
By Giovanna Ferullo.
gf/wd/hv
By Giovanna Ferullo. http://www.efe.es
Oil prices could skyrocket in event of prolonged war in Iraq - study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARIS (AFX) - A war in Iraq could cause oil prices to skyrocket in the case of a prolonged conflict although a brief showdown could cause a major market glut, a study by US oil experts said. Weighing the risks facing the global oil market in the coming months, the...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: AFX News - Europe
Date: 12/26/2002 13:56
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (493 words)
Document ID: MC20021226420000036
Subject(s): Commodities; United States; Middle East & Turkey; Oil & Petroleum
Document Type: Articles & General info
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oil prices could skyrocket in event of prolonged war in Iraq - study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARIS (AFX) - A war in Iraq could cause oil prices to skyrocket in the case of a prolonged conflict although a brief showdown could cause a major market glut, a study by US oil experts said.
Weighing the risks facing the global oil market in the coming months, the Energy Intelligence Group, a New York-based oil industry firm, said in a study published on its website that three factors would determine how disruptive a war in Iraq could be to global oil markets.
It said the timing and duration of a war in Iraq, the response of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the situation in Venezuela, where a general strike has halted oil exports, would determine how vulnerable oil markets were to a serious supply shortage.
In the most disruptive scenario, a war in Iraq starting in January would completely shut down the country's oil production by February until June.
Although OPEC has said it would try to make up for a cut in a oil supply in the event of a war in Iraq, social tensions in Venezuela could hold back a recovery in its exports until at least the end of February.
Under this scenario, EIG said, the oil market could lose five million barrels per day (bpd) of production, which "would strain the global supply system to its limits."
"But the combination of OPEC supply increases and commercial inventories would be able to maintain a tight, but stable balance through the peak winter demand period, leaving a very lean spring market," the group said.
It added that in this scenario the oil market would be "extremely vulnerable to any perceptions of military or terrorist threats or damage to the oil facilities of Mideast producers near Iraq during the winter, or even the spring."
However, on the opposite side of the spectrum, a brief war, possibly starting in March and ending in May, could lead to a glut on oil markets, weighing heavily on prices.
Under this scenario, the group said, "the projected level of OPEC production in combination with the kind of short, swift war that Washington is planning for, would leave oil markets with a surplus this winter."
"Stocks would build contra-seasonally during the first quarter and the stock accumulation would begin to become a major burden for the market by March or April, with usable commercial stocks projected to provide over 14 days of forward demand cover -- usually a clear indicator of an emerging glut," it continued.
The EIG said that the prospect of war starting in January seemed to be fading.
Oil prices shot up to a two-year high Tuesday in an abbreviated Christmas Eve session in New York on a wave of last-minute buying by operators playing the prudent card amid concerns over the continuing general strike in Venezuela and a possible war in Iraq.
The price of benchmark light sweet crude for February delivery, reached 31.97 dollars a barrel.
lt/jah/djp
Tràstor writes:
"since you are not collaborative, I need to make more pressure: you as a bad child must promise not do it again!... Plase, people all, don't pay attention to Giordano, I will need to create a complete anti-giordano web site if he continues to play like this"
Al responds definitively:
Dear Tràstor,
1. Let's cut to the chase. There is no way you are going to get me to do anything by "pressure" on me.
2. I therefore invite you to go right ahead and start an anti-Giordano web page. Make sure you spell "Narco News" correctly when you do: we get our best publicity from individuals and organizations that we upset like this.
3. If the National Bank of Mexico-Citigroup, their lawyers and surveillance teams, their president (Zedillo) and a long line of others didn't succeed in "pressuring" me to change my mind or retract my opinions, with all their billions and power, I don't see why you think that you can.
4. I normally wouldn't raise this point, except that it is one that you raised in a "group grope" email to me CCed to various journalists, including Vheadline and Vanessa Davies of El Universal, among others, last week, and therefore it has already been made public by you and I thus assume is not confidential...
Tràstor, last Autumn, you applied for a scholarship with the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism. You did so knowing full well our editorial position against coups and on the general situation in Venezuela. That position is the same today as it was then.
You applied, and were one of 125 "autènticos" to complete a very long questionairre and application process. Unfortunately, we only had room for 26 scholarship recipients and you were not one of the recipients we announced on December 2nd.
A few weeks later, here we are. You are now making all kinds of ridiculous demands and conditions upon my speech and me that of course I would never grant to anyone.
Are you sure that your disappointment over not being chosen for one of our scholarships isn't driving this entire obsessive multiple-posting marathon here by you, Tràstor?
(Again, I only raise this point because you raised it in public already: I otherwise don't "out" applicants to our J-School unless you've already "outed" yourself!)
But if Narco News was good enough for you to ask for a scholarship, your sudden hysteria and irrationality seems awfully hypocritical.
Is this just really your way of "acting out" because you didn't get a scholarship from us?
And if we're so awful, why did you apply in the first place?
(Webmeister: I fear you have been correct all these years, warning me about "glommers." Oh well. Live and learn!)
Al Giordano
Profrv (Matthew X) writes:
When I first responded I sent the URL to Al and Nessie.I don't recall making a blanket statement that Al was a bad journalist,(though I would say that of Nessie and offer proofs) I admire much narco news and have disseminated it onward.
Al replies:
You are correct. Sorry for the confusion.
Profrv writes:
I do say Al is a bad anarchist because he is hectoring and bullying anarchists to turn away from the consensus since 1937,that is that the move to support government was a big mistake.
Al replies:
At last! 130 posts later and a real argument I can sink my teeth into....
There are two things wrong with basing current reality on a "consensus since 1937."
The first thing is relying on "consensus" in a realm - anarchism - that distinctly fights for "a world where many worlds can coexist," to paraphrase Marcos.
The only possible consensus is that there can be no consensus in which all individuals and lands march in lockstep according to the same thoughts. This is part of why that, since I saw a "consensus process" destroy the Clamshell Alliance in the late 1970s - having invited every undercover agent provocateur in New England to show up at meetings and block "consensus," why I don't participate in efforts that use "consensus" process. I see consensus as authoritarian by its very nature: forcing everyone to take the same exact view or, if they don't, preventing any action from happening.
To say that anarchists have had a consensus on anything is, I think, a bit far reaching.
The other thing wrong with those three words is the third one: 1937.
As I stated in the interview with Nessie, the nature of "The State" has vastly changed in recent decades. Since 1937 we've passed the Great Depression, WWII, the a-bomb, the Red Scare, the 1960s, the rise of multi-national corporations, the spread of television and the Internet globally, the growth in power of the IMF and World Bank and other "Global State" agencies that supercede all governments in their statuatory power, and the laws of the marketplace, of Savage Capitalism, no longer answerable to any Nation-State or government...
We can not possibly remain stuck in a 1937 mindset if we are to navigate a way out of the current tyranny.
Now, I realize we are only skimming the surface of this argument that really needs to occur among anarchists. That is the kind of discussion I had hoped would spur.
Maybe if Tràstor would go dedicate his energies to building his "anti-Al" website and stop spamming this thread with 80 percent of its posts we could truly carry on this conversation. I think it is an important one, and it's clear that you do, too. Let's have it.
Profrv writes:
Now maybe Al and possibly Noam Chompsky want to increase the power of the state.
Al replies:
Chomsky's views are Chomsky's, not mine. Let's not have straw dogs here. I'm sure Noam would be more horrified than I am to have our views compared to one another's.
Profrv writes:
The other charge I mentioned against Al,as an anarchist,is that he uses smear attacks on a small group,El Libertario.
And Provrv writes to Tràstor:
You have my solidarity and support on this issue Trastor,I will defend anarchists like El Libertario,(and anarchism) to the bitter end.
Al replies:
I think, Prof, that your "solidarity", wile laudable, is probably not based on a careful reading of this group's website or statements on the Venezuela crisis.
I maintain that its views of "neutrality" in a time of moral crisis do indeed sing in harmony with disinfo lines churned out of the pro-coup "Situation Rooms" in Washington and elsewhere.
I don't say they are agents. I merely say that I suspect their motives. I do suspect their motives. I suspect not only infiltration in their ranks, but also class bias in the wrong direction: a hostility to the poor and working class of their own country.
While the class struggle rages literally outside their door as in no other land on earth in 2002, they do no more than dip their baby toe in the water and say "it's not the perfect temperature for us, we'll remain here by the side of the pool."
And then they put out press releases - on SF IMC and elsewhere - in the middle of the crisis. Maybe they're not infiltrated. Maybe they're not agents. I did not say definitively that they are. I said I suspect their motives, and I surely do. I can suspect somebody's motives without being McCarthy or Stalin! Please!
I have no power over them. I can't "bully" them. Christ. Words are words and do not bully unless backed by threat of force. I made no threat to them, no ultimatum, nothing! I simply voice my view that their motives invite suspicion because their behavior is so erratic.
But they are surely not reliable allies with the intelligence and social conscience that we need to break the global mediating tyranny over all of us. That's clear. The battle rages in their front yard and they're hiding under their desktops.
Now, Profrv, two more things:
1. Your email address bounces from my hotmail account when I try to email you. I don't know why. Please send me an email address that will not.
2. Today things have been calm enough that I could respond to you on the first point above. It's a conversation I'm happy to continue. It needs to happen among anarchists, and I'm still evolving my thoughts on it. We all have to evolve given the fast-paced growth and scale of the enemy, that Super-State that envelopes the entire globe and knows no national boundaries.
If I don't reply to any follow ups tomorrow or the next day, please know that I will get back to this and am really, truly, happy that finally we get to the gist of the matter.
Al Giordano
"If we find negligence on the side of any person or institution...
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Public_20Subscription_20Assassination
... Public Subscription Assassination .Assassins sans Frontiers.
------------------------------
Let's see...
2.- I therefore invite you to go right ahead and start an anti-Giordano web page. Make sure you spell "Narco News" correctly when you do: we get our best publicity from individuals and organizations that we upset like this.
--------------------------------------------------------
I am not going the use the name Narco News... And it will be no destructive against Giordano, not directly and not intentionally, it will only show the half missing in your "beutiful revolutions" in Latin America, but in a way that you will end like you and Chavez are: persons not trust by me, a tunnel vision minded person. (the confirmation of this is down on number 4)
3.- If the National Bank of Mexico-Citigroup, their lawyers and surveillance teams, their president (Zedillo) and a long line of others didn't succeed in "pressuring" me to change my mind or retract my opinions, with all their billions and power, I don't see why you think that you can.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have millions and I don't want to have any money... But I got truth, enough for me. Ah, yes, I have another weapon: Time. Since I decided to go in a nutshell, all my time will be for you when Chavez-cups are over.
4.- I normally wouldn't raise this point, except that it is one that you raised in a "group grope" email to me CCed to various journalists, including Vheadline and Vanessa Davies of El Universal, among others, last week, and therefore it has already been made public by you and I thus assume is not confidential...
--------------------------------------------------------------
This is the best confirmation for me of the tunnel vision mind of Giordano... I indeed made public that I applied for the trip to Mexico to know Giordano, I wrote that because I was honestly calling you to read El Libertario, and I imagined Giordano being a busy person with all troubles in Venezuela and other possible occupations, I wanted him to remember me, because me, like Giordano think similar regarding "normal" journalist, the only thing is that he has worked more on this than me and already have a name for them: "simulators".
Giordano had a simple thought, the first one that crossed his mind, and then he assumes that it must be the true, instead we need to look for several alternatives and discard each carefully through investigation and experimentation, etc, then the surviving hypothesis should be right.
In example, maybe I am just trying to rise my ego with Giordano's discussions, since he attacked my journalists allies and then I have this wonderful oportunity to cross arguments with Giordano, maybe I got an inflated ego and that is the reason I am here. But no.
Other example, maybe I am in the end trying to correct a wrong in the world, the dream that Chavez revolution is good (neither for the poorest of the poor).
I can really spend lot of time, and with pleasure, explaining here why I am not practicing retaliations against Giordano due to my not entering in his journalists academy, as he thinks. I just want to say that it is not true, I honestly am asking him to read again EL LIBERTARIO and understand that poors cannot live intoxicated by Chavez proposed developments, ok eco man, hospitals in Chavez revolution will be better, maybe is true, and I hope is true because we will need better hospitals for curing lots of cancers, mercury poisoning, and other diseases on poors and everybody product of Chavez own style of globalization.
And since everybody knows our previous relations, I just wanted to go to mexico and speak to Giordanos team in order to make them understand that poors also need healthy environment in Venezuela.
Trastor
P.S. Indigenous rights sucks on bolivarian constitution, Indigenous articles lack the real thing on this constitution , read more on my future web pages regarding "AL GIORDANO: THE HALF MISSING", I cannot give more datails now because it could be seen as a "strike cupist" movement, and also the information I am giving away right now could be used by any 'escualido' spying around against Chavez, Something I would not like.
Trastor
Here meybe is a proof for the mising half, I will investigate what is really happening on the this Orinoco Delta. Chavez is happy with The Venezuelan Orinoco Delta oil and gas globalization practices...
Trastor...
-------------------------------
Nation's Children Plead With Citigroup to Stop Destroying Rainforest -- Thousands of Letters Delivered to CEO Weill Ask for Relief for Embattled Rainforest Ecosystems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK, Dec 18, 2002 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- Rainforest Action Network (RAN) today delivered thousands of appeals to Citigroup from school children across the United States asking CEO Sandy Weill for a special holiday gift. Using pictures and letters, the children conveyed concerned over threatened rainforests and the animals and people who depend on them. The letters also asked Citi to make the changes necessary to protect these endangered ecosystems. Pictures can be viewed at http://www.ran.org/kids--action/kidsletters.html.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: AScribe Newswire
Date: 12/19/2002 22:33
Price: Free
Document Size: Very Short (less than 1 page)
Document ID: FG20021219480000058
Subject(s): Mts; Activist; Bank; Bond; Boycott; Business; California; CEO; Children; Corporate; Ecuador; Environment; Europe; Finance; Fire; Fossil Fuel; Gasoline; Habitat; Indonesia; Mining; Pipeline; Poverty; Renewable Energy; Venezuela
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nation's Children Plead With Citigroup to Stop Destroying Rainforest -- Thousands of Letters Delivered to CEO Weill Ask for Relief for Embattled Rainforest Ecosystems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Thursday, December 19, 2002 10:33 PM EST
NEW YORK, Dec 18, 2002 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- Rainforest Action Network (RAN) today delivered thousands of appeals to Citigroup from school children across the United States asking CEO Sandy Weill for a special holiday gift. Using pictures and letters, the children conveyed concerned over threatened rainforests and the animals and people who depend on them. The letters also asked Citi to make the changes necessary to protect these endangered ecosystems. Pictures can be viewed at http://www.ran.org/kids--action/kidsletters.html.
Approximately 2,500 appeals were delivered to 399 Park Avenue, the corporate offices of Sandy Weill. Accompanied by a choir singing carols adapted for the occasion, activists asked that Mr. Weill come down and accept the letters. While passing out flyers detailing Citi's destructive practices around the world, they held a banner reading "Sandy Weill: Grant us our wish in the New Year - Stop funding forest destruction and global warming."
"It is our hope this holiday season that Sandy Weill will hear the voices of the children who will inherit the Earth," said Ilyse Hogue, director of the Global Finance Campaign at Rainforest Action Network. "Citi is faced with a very real choice in the coming year. For the sake of these children, we hope they choose to lead the financial industry toward a sustainable future."
RAN is calling on Citi to meet the financial industry's best environmental and social practices. The financial industry's leading players in Europe have begun to put policies in place that address the environmental and social impacts of their investments. For example, top Dutch Bank, ABN AMRO, has policies prohibiting the financing of extractive industries that clear or degrade primary forests or operate on indigenous land.
In striking contrast, Citi CEO Sandy Weill, refuses to establish meaningful environmental and social lending policies, despite overwhelming public support for wilderness preservation. Unhindered by environmental standards, Citi ranks as the top financier of destructive logging, mining and fossil fuel projects around the world. According to Bloomberg analytics, Citi's loans and corporate bond underwriting secured its position as the number one financier of both the coal industry and the fossil fuel industry in the year 2001.
"Citi's lack of business ethics bears a high cost to people and the environment," said Beka Economopolous a RAN activist who delivered the letters. "Children today inherently understand that a healthy environment is critical to their well-being. They risk being heirs to a world without rainforests and ravaged by impacts of global warming if Citigroup does not grasp this opportunity to invest in their future."
Citi's controversial projects span the globe, wiping out endangered forests and forcing communities into poverty and homelessness. Citi has recently come under fire for financing the highly controversial Camisea gas project that threatens the Peruvian Amazon. According to the Smithsonian Institute, the Camisea project will affect one of the world's most biologically diverse regions. Other Citi projects include the destruction of California's Headwaters Forests and the Mimbo Nambillo Cloudforest in Ecuador, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, funding for palm oil plantations in critical orangutan habitat in Indonesia, and a pipeline through the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela.
Today's letter delivery is the most recent activity in RAN's Global Finance Campaign to transform the funding practices of the corporate financial system. RAN and a broad coalition of groups and individuals are calling on Citi to lead the corporate financial sector in ending destructive investments in fossil fuel and deforestation and prioritize investments in clean, renewable energy. The campaign has included hundreds of demonstrations, a boycott of Citibank credit cards and non-violent direct actions.
((AScribe - The Public Interest Newswire / http://www.ascribe.org))
You're finally learning!
GLOMMERS = BAD NEWS!
I told you this for six years. You kept saying there is good in everybody, that everybody syhould be listened to. Face it amigo, I was right!!!!!
Treaster is a GLOMMER. He is obsessed with you. AL! YOU CAUSED THE PROBLEM BY TREATING HIM NICE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! Listen to him now...
"I have another weapon: Time. Since I decided to go in a nutshell, all my time will be for you when Chavez-cups are over."
TREASTER IS SAYING THIS in a poor country! He must be in the top percent of the top percent to have the luxury to "go in a nutshell" and have "all my time for you." Al! HE'S IN LOVE WITH YOU, AL!!!!!!!! And you led him along, you made him think he had a chance and now he's Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and you're poor Michael Douglas.
Al, so you don't get in any more problems like this, memorize the three things I always tell you.
WEBMEISTER'S THREE RULES FOR REVOLUTIONARIES
1. ACTIVISTS ARE EITHER "FAST CLASS" OR "SLOW CLASS". AVOID THE SLOW CLASS.
2. BEWARE OF GLOMMERS. THEY ALWAYS TURN ON YOU WHEN THEY REALIZE YOU DON'T LOVE THEM LIKE THEY LOVE YOU.
3. 99% OF MEN ARE CHILDREN. TRUST WOMEN, NOT MEN.
Al - you are pretty good on numbers 1 and 3, but 2 has always been your problem. GET WITH THE PROGRAM AL!
What is that Chavez word for people like treaster? It sounds like scualidos. He's a scualido (sp?). He doesn't have to work in a poor country. He has too much time on his hands and so, Al, he's going to stalk you now.
Next time one of these idiots appears, shut him down the first chance you get. Don't suffer fools, Al. Yeah yeah yah youre a people person. Stick with the fast class, Al. You're doin great. Theyre all coming out of the woodwork now. Youre driving them CRAZY. Its fun to watch, but, Al, It is more important than ever that you follow my three rules.
your friend
webmeister
--------------------------------------------
Mr. Webmeister
One of the bad misconceptions of western civilization is the belief that for having free time we need to be bumps.
I go far beyond money in my quest of living. I am slow learning from pemon peoples that you can survive without money, and still have free time to enjoy life, you don't need to be alinated in lot of work for having the esentials for living, food, roof, love, etc.
One of the bad things of not reaching conssensus before doing something is that a majority usually manipulated by Chavez-Media tramples under foot a minority, that's a thing I heard from pemons, and I lived the division of Pemon peoples directly by Chavez because our president needed to pass urgent an international mega power line to Brasil. that's why I want to get better and boomproof arguments back from pemon themselves in order to get things right, not because I want to stay attached to Giordano all my life, but because I have realized with this single statement about consensus that Giordanos ideas seems to be dangerous to Latin America.
Giordano is having an informatic orgasm because in Venezuela the poors are fighting the media, and that is central to his life. to beat commercial media, but commercial media is just a very small part of the problem in Latin America...
Trastor
P.S. and for your knowledge, Mr. webmeister, I run an old P I-166 mmx, sometimes with windows and sometimes with linux (i got both operative systems installed), and I can write this to you thanks to an international organization from england that help me to connect to internet thru satellite here... In the end I am in the same situation of the poor, my wife is a teacher and his minium salary helps us to save money and give us some "luxuries" like buying National Geographic and Mountain Bike Magazine each month, and new clothes when ours are too old... Also in this small frontier town here is no luxuries to spend money in, here is not even a cinema, of course I know there are some people very very poor, but I consider myself a poor guy, and I am proud of it, because I wanted to be this way, I wanted to leave all western commodities in big cities, and came here to this amazonic landscape, isolated, ah, i forgot i got a mountain bike because it was a donation from the same british organization to move quickly thru pemon paths to take pictures of illegal gold mines in this indigenous territories (just in case you say now that because I have a mountain bicycle i am rich).
Trastor
>>>> Al discusses with Matthew X
by Al Giordano. Thursday December 26, 2002 at 04:46 PM
narconews [at] hotmail.com
Profrv (Matthew X) writes:
When I first responded I sent the URL to Al and Nessie.I don't recall making a blanket statement that Al was a bad journalist,(though I would say that of Nessie and offer proofs) I admire much narco news and have disseminated it onward.
Al replies:
You are correct. Sorry for the confusion.<<<<
This raises an important point of ambiguity and giving the benefit of the doubt.(or not.)It is now well known that even our eyes fool our minds in certain conditions.Confusion is possible,it's undesirable in 'hot' situations and should be cleared up ASAP.I hope and trust this is not a bad time for this but the section of the article I question runs to 4 scrolls in my browser.
>>>>> Profrv writes:
I do say Al is a bad anarchist because he is hectoring and bullying anarchists to turn away from the consensus since 1937,that is that the move to support government was a big mistake.
Al replies:
At last! 130 posts later and a real argument I can sink my teeth into....
There are two things wrong with basing current reality on a "consensus since 1937."
The first thing is relying on "consensus" in a realm - anarchism - that distinctly fights for "a world where many worlds can coexist," to paraphrase Marcos.
The only possible consensus is that there can be no consensus in which all individuals and lands march in lockstep according to the same thoughts. This is part of why that, since I saw a "consensus process" destroy the Clamshell Alliance in the late 1970s - having invited every undercover agent provocateur in New England to show up at meetings and block "consensus," why I don't participate in efforts that use "consensus" process. I see consensus as authoritarian by its very nature: forcing everyone to take the same exact view or, if they don't, preventing any action from happening.
To say that anarchists have had a consensus on anything is, I think, a bit far reaching.<<<
Perhaps we should ask the survivors of Spain?
>>>The other thing wrong with those three words is the third one: 1937.
As I stated in the interview with Nessie, the nature of "The State" has vastly changed in recent decades. Since 1937 we've passed the Great Depression, WWII, the a-bomb, the Red Scare, the 1960s, the rise of multi-national corporations, the spread of television and the Internet globally, the growth in power of the IMF and World Bank and other "Global State" agencies that supercede all governments in their statuatory power, and the laws of the marketplace, of Savage Capitalism, no longer answerable to any Nation-State or government...
We can not possibly remain stuck in a 1937 mindset if we are to navigate a way out of the current tyranny.
Now, I realize we are only skimming the surface of this argument that really needs to occur among anarchists. That is the kind of discussion I had hoped would spur.<<<
Thats great because I feel that there have been advances since then,from your friend Abbie,through Hunter S.Thomson,Bob Black,John Zerzen and others,a year and a half ago I would have sworn Anarchism and the net were riding a Tsunami.I would have to grudgingly admit that the best of Situationism and anarcho-sydicalism has not dated.I agree that consensus as you describe it has passed it's use by date,however the fact remains that the burden of proof when you call for anarchists to support a particular state is a heavy one and you failed to convince me.I have no problem seeing you as an expert on the enourmous drug war and its extraordinary significance but the politics of your arguments...I will stick with Proudon when he said,"It implies a contradiction that a government could ever be called revolutionary for the simple reason that it is the government.'
If this makes me a 'fundamentalist',then I have been one since 1975.
>>>Maybe if Tràstor would go dedicate his energies to building his "anti-Al" website and stop spamming this thread with 80 percent of its posts we could truly carry on this conversation. I think it is an important one, and it's clear that you do, too. Let's have it. <<<
If the superstate can't be answerable to any nation state then why should anarchists support any particular nation state,no matter how good it is?
If it is part of a link up strategy then it is still flawed because I feel you will have very real problems with the militarism.How are countries like Argentina,Uruguay,Paraguay,Peru and above all Chile going to fall in on that?
I cant be the only one with doubts.
>>>Profrv writes:
Now maybe Al and possibly Noam Chompsky want to increase the power of the state.
Al replies:
Chomsky's views are Chomsky's, not mine. Let's not have straw dogs here. I'm sure Noam would be more horrified than I am to have our views compared to one another's. <<<
Well,when you call on anarchs to support a particular state,a particular government you are not alone Al because I have it on ChuckO's authority that Noam wants in some circumstances to actually increase the power of the state or the "floor of the cage,'as it was described.This is a conversation that is going on here and there.Clearly the state,like capitalism is a dynamic process among other things and anarchists might be persuaded to lower the tone of their opposition to the state.I plan to argue against that.
I am not strawmanning you there,just noting that your views on the state and Noam's are not 100 miles apart.
>>>Profrv writes:
The other charge I mentioned against Al,as an anarchist,is that he uses smear attacks on a small group,El Libertario.
And Provrv writes to Tràstor:
You have my solidarity and support on this issue Trastor,I will defend anarchists like El Libertario,(and anarchism) to the bitter end.
Al replies:
I think, Prof, that your "solidarity", wile laudable, is probably not based on a careful reading of this group's website or statements on the Venezuela crisis.<<<
I admit,I don't speak or read spanish and I know Trastor is not an anarchist.
>>>I maintain that its views of "neutrality" in a time of moral crisis do indeed sing in harmony with disinfo lines churned out of the pro-coup "Situation Rooms" in Washington and elsewhere.<<<
Put yourself in their shoes though Al,they say the Chavista's put them in the bad books,how could they then come out for the government now?
How many anarchists in the world have been put on this same spot to support the State,the popular front,the defecting army battallion?
It is so anti anarchist it would be machiavellian to do it.
>>>I don't say they are agents. I merely say that I suspect their motives. I do suspect their motives. I suspect not only infiltration in their ranks, but also class bias in the wrong direction: a hostility to the poor and working class of their own country.<<<
Well I guess we will have to see how all that pans out,the rogue terror state has plenty of money to burn and some anarchists are getting a reputation for being middle and upper class wankers,still these are very serious charges.Trastor says they were the only ones to run the assassination story and Chavez is buying off the poor at the expense of the enviroment,robbing peter to pay paul.I think we are all learning curveing anyway.
>>>While the class struggle rages literally outside their door as in no other land on earth in 2002, they do no more than dip their baby toe in the water and say "it's not the perfect temperature for us, we'll remain here by the side of the pool." <<<
Again what else can they do without throwing all their materials and beliefs in a bonfire? We have a right to speak even if it's wrong.
>>>And then they put out press releases - on SF IMC and elsewhere - in the middle of the crisis. <<<
Anyone can pick up a small anarchist packet off the A-infos wire and repost it.Recently someone reposted a old polemic about the EZLN vs 'Ted Kascinski.'As there is no way of tracing all these packets,(thank goodness!)we shouldn't assume malice where stupidity will do.Why are these small anarchist groups and individuals taken so deadly seriously? It's like we're heretics or something sometimes.
>>>Maybe they're not infiltrated. Maybe they're not agents. I did not say definitively that they are. I said I suspect their motives, and I surely do. I can suspect somebody's motives without being McCarthy or Stalin! Please! <<<
Sure and I can't wait to see something from them,though proving innocence is difficult.The burden of proof is on the accuser.If your not making the definite accusation,El Libertario has the right to silence and the assumption of innocence.Natural justice demands nothing less than that,don't worry Al,truth will out.
>>>I have no power over them. I can't "bully" them. Christ.<<<
My bully reference was in relation to the anarchists in general that I think you were calling for,'once more into the breach'
Actually I will happily APster any oligarchs over there if their e-mail adress pops up on my radar.
>>>Words are words and do not bully unless backed by threat of force. I made no threat to them, no ultimatum, nothing! I simply voice my view that their motives invite suspicion because their behavior is so erratic.<<<
Okay,I withdraw the 'bullying' accusation,lets just say you can be damn persuasive when you want to be.
>>>But they are surely not reliable allies with the intelligence and social conscience that we need to break the global mediating tyranny over all of us. That's clear. The battle rages in their front yard and they're hiding under their desktops.<<<
I think breaks like this are not strictly necersary since the general acceptance of the,'diversity of tactics' approach.Even if you think a particular individual or group is not helping,its their right to go there own way.Advancing in diversity-striking in unison anyone?
>>>Now, Profrv, two more things:
1. Your email address bounces from my hotmail account when I try to email you. I don't know why. Please send me an email address that will not. <<<
Done,just before I began this epic.
>>>2. Today things have been calm enough that I could respond to you on the first point above. It's a conversation I'm happy to continue. It needs to happen among anarchists, and I'm still evolving my thoughts on it. We all have to evolve given the fast-paced growth and scale of the enemy, that Super-State that envelopes the entire globe and knows no national boundaries.<<<
I dont seperate the modern state from either crony capitalism on the right and Red Chinese Communism on the left.It's all one and your spot on about the moronic inferno mass media.They are only our masters as long people think they are.This military-entertainment complex is a strong and dangerous, inhuman and cruel enemy...Nowhere in the world can people feel secure until it is vanquished. But it must be vanquished. And it will be vanquished.Can we fight it by assisting the old small nation state's?
Like Ven.Ec and Bra?
I respect your right to try that method,I would ask that the diversity of tactics be trialled by anyone else reading this,SC Marcos is correct,"a world where many worlds can coexist" is more likely to come from this approach imo.
>>>If I don't reply to any follow ups tomorrow or the next day, please know that I will get back to this and am really, truly, happy that finally we get to the gist of the matter.
Al Giordano
http://www.narconews.com/<<<
Well,I'll put this up and send you another e-mail Al.Please forget the personal polemics from my side( and Nessie,I don't 'hate' you.)Thanks for this detailed response.
All the best.
Matt.
I have received some information today that In Chiapas Conservation International is doing very wrong, they are asking for represion against zapatistas and campesinos. They are asking the goverment to destroy completely the zapatistas...
In Venezuela Conservation International is working closely to Chavez goverment and hiding his carbon sequestration negotiations and hiding any negotiation to indigenous peoples on that territories. How is it that Venezuela, in the goverment of the poors, Conservation International is treated well???, And they are doing very wrong in Venezuela too, they are behind our biodiversity and other natural resources, plus the multi-millionarie negotiation regarding carbon sequestration... I told before, Chavez has his own secret own style of globalization...
"The beautiful Chavez revolution", The poors receive small amounts of care in hospitals that they said some day will be better than now, but they give inmediatly our richest resources to Multinationals as Conservation International.
Trastor
Do you really think the Greens in Germany, for example, would find better allies in the more corporate party, the Christian Democrats?
I criticize you Trastor for your yuppie attitudes. We have the same problem here in the USA. Greens who are 99% concerned about the environment and only 1% concerned with economic justice, universal healthcare, etc..
And anyone who has used consensus knows that it is only good to a point. That point being deadlock. At that point after reasonable efforts have been made to reach consensus people have to choose their paths.
Chavez is doing well by the poor and in taking back the 80% of oil income that currently disappears. Vast amount of proof here:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1554210.php
Note Trastor's sabotaging responses to my article compilation at the link above and how Trastor completely ignores the economic justice points.
Trastor, you have lost all my support. You are a yuppie mole. I have done many environmental actions myself, and participated in all kinds of decision-making. Your interactions here have been very educational to many people.
You have proved Al Giordano's points in spades. You sit on the sidelines and let progress for the poor be overturned by the rich who want to keep their 80% of the Venezualan oil revenue. You should be ashamed and I am going to follow you EVERYWHERE until you apologize to ME.
Since he took power in 1998, the regime's first goal is to put an end to all the othe institutional powers such as the Supreme Court.
Levels of corruption never seen in the past.
I would invite any of Mr. Giordanno backers to email me and tell me otherwise, fdaza59@yahoo,com
In 1974 80% of oil income went to the state. Today 80% of Venezuelan oil income goes to the rich, and to "operating costs." Only 20% goes to the state. Chavez reforms will help reverse this in January 2003. This is why the coup-plotters, "strike"-promoters, and corporate media are in such a hurry to overthrow the fairly-ELECTED Chavez government. They want to prevent these reforms, and reverse other already-implemented reforms that help the poor and lower middle class. Please forward widely. Massive corporate-media disinformation, destabilization campaign going on inside Venezuela. Stop the coup-strikers! Support President Chavez! Help Venezuela!
http://belgium.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=43707 and
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=44308
Well what about the Chavez family?
On simple humanitarian grounds how much should they be expected to put up with?
While Venezuela could be the one to set off a planet wide mexican wave of revolution and will certainly be,(along with Nigeria)on the warstates shopping list,if the price paid defying the warstate is human sacrifice,well when does that price get to high?
Also the beer is running out!
I leave with some thoughts of nessie from another thread that might apply to el libertario also..."...To fetishize unity is to guarantee defeat..."
AND
"...From the Spanish experience, and from the documentation and analysis of Leval and his comrades, we learn that local autonomy does not harm the economy. It nourishes it. So however AK, Rainbow or any local collective chooses to conduct their business, I support them, even if it’s not how I, personally, would have done things. It’s not about me. It’s about us..."
(from a thread on Lorenzo's book,it's on the front page,today.)
shoving at the thing from all sides
to bring it down
People get ready for the war of the flea.Here is something to read while we wait for the certain suicide of the norte americano empire of fools.
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/bey.html
I take it all back,Venezuela could be the key.Vive la Revolutione! VIVA!
"Anarchy is not lack of order. Anarchy is lack of ORDERS."
Trastor
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
VANCOUVER, Dec 30, 2002 (Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) -- Attractive geology does not guarantee mining investment if a region's policies are bad, say mining executives surveyed in the sixth Annual Survey of Mining Companies, released today by The Fraser Institute, Canada's leading economic think tank.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Canada Newswire
Date: 12/30/2002 07:25
Price: Free
Document Size: Short (1 or 2 pages)
Document ID: FC20021230270000011
Subject(s): Cnw; Argentina; Australia; Bolivia; Brazil; British Columbia; Business; Calgary; Canada; Chile; China; Colombia; Communications; Ecuador; Email; Exploration; Ghana; Government; Index; India; Indonesia; Investment; Kazakhstan; Metals; Mexico; Mining; Natural Resources; Nevada; New Zealand; North America; Nova Scotia; Nunavut; Ontario; Papua New Guinea; Peru; Philippines; Policy; Public Policy; Quebec; Rates; Russia; South Africa; Toronto; Vancouver; Washington; Web; Wisconsin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mining executives rate the investment climate of jurisdictions around the world -- Quebec rated best in North America
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Filed: Monday, December 30, 2002 7:25 AM EST
VANCOUVER, Dec 30, 2002 (Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) -- Attractive geology does not guarantee mining investment if a region's policies are bad, say mining executives surveyed in the sixth Annual Survey of Mining Companies, released today by The Fraser Institute, Canada's leading economic think tank.
In this year's survey, companies responsible for a combined total of US$738 million in international exploration (in 2001) rated the policy attractiveness and mineral attractiveness of mining jurisdictions in North America and internationally.
"Jurisdictions like Chile, Australia, Quebec, and Nevada, which bolster attractive geology with mining-friendly policies, do well on the overall investment attractiveness index. Other jurisdictions like British Columbia and Russia, who also have excellent geology, are hurt by their policies which have lowered their score," said Liv Fredricksen, the survey's coordinator.
The results of the survey were used to create several indices. The Mineral Potential Index rates a region's attractiveness for new investment based on its geology. The Policy Potential Index is a composite index that measures the effects of government polices such as regulation and land use in attracting new investment. An overall Investment Attractiveness Index considers both mineral potential and policy factors (see attached figures).
To view the Related Figures to the Annual Survey of Mining Companies,
please go to:
http://files.newswire.ca/22/miningfigures.doc
The Winners
Chile claims the highest rank on the overall Investment Attractiveness Index with a score of 94 points out of a possible 100. Chile's ranking is a result of the country's top score on the Mineral Potential Index (100) and high score on the Policy Potential Index (85).
Quebec, the top-rated North American jurisdiction with an overall investment score of 90, also ranks highly on both indices, with a score of 98 on the Mineral Potential Index and score of 77 on the Policy Potential Index.
Australia is the next most attractive jurisdiction with an overall score of 89, and Nevada is the highest rated jurisdiction in the US with a score of 86.
Also placing in the top ten jurisdictions for overall investment appeal are: Peru (84), Brazil and Ontario (both with 83), Mexico (74), the Northwest Territories and Bolivia (both with 68), and Nunavut (67).
The Losers
Wisconsin (13), Washington and New Zealand (both with 22), and Nova Scotia and India (both with 24) all rank among the least attractive areas for new mining investment based on their poor ratings in both mineral and policy potential.
The policies of British Columbia are rated to be the equivalent of those of Russia -- both jurisdictions scoring a dismal 23 on the Policy Potential Index which lowered their respective investment attractiveness ratings to 63 (Russia) and 54 (British Columbia).
"BC continues to score low despite recent changes in policy, demonstrating that the perception of a jurisdiction's business climate is as important as its actual policies," said Fredricksen.
"Mining executives are becoming increasingly willing to invest their exploration dollars around the globe. Attractive geology is necessary, but not enough. Governments who want to maintain viable mining industries in their jurisdictions must enact favourable policies to encourage investment," she concludes.
About the Survey
The 158 companies participating in the survey include 27 senior mining companies and 131 junior mining companies which together represent 60 percent (US$191 million) of the total mineral exploration expenditure in Canada in 2001 (US$317.4 million) as estimated by Natural Resources Canada. The survey represents about 32 percent (US$56 million) of the exploration expenditures in the United States in 2001, and 37 percent (US$237 million) of the exploration expenditures in Latin America in 2001 as estimated by Metals Economics Group.
This year's survey includes all Canadian provinces and territories (except PEI), selected US states, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, and South Africa.
To determine the overall Investment Attractiveness Index, the policy factors were weighted 40 percent and mineral potential 60 percent. This year's survey differs from previous years when both factors were weighted equally. The changes were made in response to feedback from companies about how they make their exploration decisions.
Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy
organization based in Vancouver, with offices in Calgary and Toronto. The
media release and survey (in PDF) can be viewed on our web site at
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca.
For further information contact: Suzanne Walters, Director of
Communications, Tel. (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew(at)fraserinstitute.ca.
VIEW ADDITIONAL COMPANY-SPECIFIC INFORMATION: http://www.newswire.ca/cgi-bin/inquiry.cgi?OKEY=16720
CONTACT: For further information: Liv Fredricksen, Mining Survey Coordinator,
Centre for Trade and Globalization Studies, The Fraser Institute, Telephone
(604) 688-0221, ext 551, Email livf(at)fraserinstitute.ca
News release via Canada NewsWire, Vancouver 604-669-7764
- Flo
Some Venezuela news sources.
http://www.aporrea.org (in Spanish)
http://www.narconews.com (English,
Spanish)
http://www.vheadline.com/p1/
(English)
http://www.einnews.com/venezuela/
(English)
http://www.zmag.org/venezuela_watch.htm
(English)
http://www.indybay.org (English,
Spanish. Use search engine there to find Venezuela articles and many comments)
SEARCH Venezuela news sources. Standard Google
searches. Click, and then add additional search terms. Click any
result, and for the very latest news click the site's homepage link in one
of the result pages:
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:flashpoints.net
KPFA Flashpoints Radio. (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:narconews.com
(English, Spanish)
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:vheadline.com
(English)
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:zmag.org
(English)
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:einnews.com
(English)
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:aporrea.org
(Spanish)
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. After clicking this link, you can also
click the "News" tab to get very up-to-date results for the only
Indymedia site indexed by Google News. SF Indymedia also has its own
excellent search engine.
Google News. Some search shortcuts for very up-to-date Venezuela
news.
Click, and then add additional search terms:
http://news.google.com/news?q=venezuela
Approximately 4000 Google News sites.
http://news.google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:indymedia.org
Indymedia.org sites. Only San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia shows up.
http://news.google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org&scoring=d
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. Sorted by date.
http://news.google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. Sorted by relevance.
Google does not seem to be indexing the "Local News" or "Global
News" columns on the San
Francisco Bay Area Indymedia homepage here:
http://www.indybay.org Only the items
in the "Other/Breaking News" column is indexed by the Google News
spider when it shows up daily. If an item is transferred too quickly out of "Other/Breaking
News", then the spider may not see the item during its daily (or more often?)
indexing of selected news sites. I suggest the Indymedia staff leave copies of items in
"Other/Breaking News" because, for now, San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia
seems to be the
ONLY Indymedia news site indexed by Google News.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1555816.php
This search form below can be emailed in HTML (color and graphics) email. Or just send the URL of the page where you found this. You can click "save" in the file menu of your browser. This will save it to your computer for use anytime you are online. It is easy to add or delete site choices in the search form below. Just look at the HTML code in any web page editor. Google indexes some sites more often than others. So for the very latest info you may have to go to the websites directly, and browse there, or use their site search engines there if they have one.
Choose news site:
NarcoNews.com
aporrea.org (in Spanish)
einnews.com
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia
Venezuela's Electronic News. vheadline.com
ZNet. zmag.org
Enter more search terms. Put quotes around phrases: |
Are you an anarchist?
Do you think its good psychology to appeal to anarchists like Al did?
Do you think its good to slam fellow anarchists the way Al did?
As an anarchist does Al make a very fine narco news reporter?
Is Nessie schizophrenic?
Help me out here.
"enthusiastic newcomer or has idiological blinders"
is a form of pseudo-condescending spin supposing only 2 choices both of which are insulting. One is insulting in a direct way and one does so in a kind of Father-knows-best way. Though Al Giordano may be older than you.
I found some more Venezuela news sources and incorporated them in this latest streamlined search form:
Some sites (such as NarcoNews and San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia) are indexed daily by Google News. Click the "News" tab in the results page.
Choose news site:
NarcoNews.com
The web.
alainet.org (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French).
thegully.com (English).
Venezuela's Electronic News. vheadline.com
ZNet. zmag.org (English, Spanish).
San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. sf.indymedia.org
Latin American Energy, Oil & Gas. PetroleumWorld.com
aporrea.org (in Spanish).
einnews.com (Must pay monthly fee).
Enter more search terms. Put quotes around phrases: |
As for Gary's Rumors, I would be most interested to hear his specific critique of John Reed's work in Mexico and in Russia. But perhaps that is another thread for another day.
The idea that "enthusiasm" equals naivete is a distinctly bourgieousie concept. It is pounded into students by expensive academia and those that buy it are the weak minded.
I bring 25 years of full time participation in social movements to the table and many victories at that: I have also lived in and reported from Latin America for more than five years. I'm not a tourist. But of course I am neither a product of US academia, and Gary's post reminds me of the Situationist slogan: "Be realistic: Demand the Impossible."
It's funny, because some people criticize my argument in the interview above for being too pragmatic, not "pure" enough in their outdated views of anarchism. Gary thinks they're not pragmatic enough. Oh well, to each his own flavor...
Anyway, here's an exchange I had, in Spanish, with a Venezuelan who although he declares himself an "anarchist," defends those who march behind the coup mongers and is more worried about Narco News and Ignacio Ramonet than he is about the Commercial Media's behavior in his own country. He specifically compares any pamphleteer to commercial TV simulation. His view of "anarchism" is so "petty bourgieousie" that its comedic.
But what is most interesting is that he inadvertantly bolsters my argument when he notes that anarchist organizing was not possible under previous regimes - for threat of getting shot and killed - but it is now possible for the first time under the Chavez government.
Anarchists have to protect and defend the conditions conducive to putting forward our more radical view of the world. To do so doesn't "endorse" those conditions as a limit or example of the stagnant permanent state we desire. We clearly want to go further than that. But to defend those conditions is, rather, part of an overall strategy - a pragmatic one - to give a true anarchist movement the soil and water to grow.
Anyway, for those of you who read Spanish, you might enjoy my exchange with the "faux-anarchist" below.
Al Giordano
>
>Hola, mi nombre es Daniel Certain, y vivo en Venezuela.
>
>Mi padre vive en Chicago y es un anarquista que apoya a la
>"Revolución Bolivariana", mas mi posición es extremadamente
>diferente a la suya, por ende a la de ustedes también. En estos
>momentos estoy apoyando a la única organización verdaderamente
>anarquista de Venezuela,
¿Y como se llama dicha organización?
la cual no ha tenido la suerte de
>participar en la lucha sindical, debido al momento político que
>vivía mi país durante el inicio de las luchas sindicales y los
>movimientos anarquistas en el resto del mundo. Mi país, si mal no
>recuerdo vivía para ese momento la dictadura del General Juan
>Vicente Gómez, a quien la palabra "sindicato" le parecería no mas
>que un pedido para ser fusilado por parte de la persona que se
>atreviera a nombrarla. Después las cúpulas políticas que gobernaron
>el país durante 40 años después de la caída de Pérez Jimenez se
>adueñaron de los sindicatos haciéndolos no mas que simples anexos de
>sus partidos políticos.
Estoy de acuerdo con tu descripción de la historia y de los sindicatos anexos del sistema. Vive ésto hoy mismo con Carlos Ortega y sus mafiosos.
>
>En este momento renace el anarquismo en Venezuela,
Que bueno. Pero, en una manera has hecho un buen argumento en que la revolución bolivariana relacionado con Chavez y tantos otros ha hecho posible un anarquismo abierto en tu pais. Me has dicho que no era posible en los tiempos en que se fusilaron organizadores de sindicatos o anarquistas, pero de repente es posible ahora. ¿Por que? Segun tus propias palabras, ahora no hay represión como antes. Pues, hay que reconocer que Chavez ha abierto un espacio hasta para anarquistas en Venezuela.
y antes de que
>digan que no son mas que una pila de "lifestyle anarchist", les
>puedo informar que están próximos a pronunciarse sobre lo que esta
>pasando en mi país y a re-iniciar una lucha que se había abandonado
>en mi país.
Bueno, te voy a dar una reflexion que, aunque no necesariamente te identifica como "lifestyle anarchist," ya me da una duda de los esfuersos que me escribes.
La amenaza de fusilarse, para los revolucionarios, no nos detiene nunca. Si miras a los muertos anuales de periodistas como yo en América Latina y el mundo, o los asesinatos de cientos de lideres sindicales en Colombia cada año, o a muchos otros rincones del mundo y las luchas sociales, hay un montón de anarquistas y revolucionarios que arriesgan nuestros vidas cada día pero están puestos para seguir la lucha hasta las últimas consequencias. Si tu grupo solo se consiste del tipo de persona quien solo cree posible una lucha en tiempos menos represivos (como lo de Chavez), hasta cuando podemos confiar en su valor para seguir adelante si, por golpe o otro medida, regresan los represores como Carlos Andres Perez y los otros fascistas disfrazados como "huelguistas" hoy en día?
Si de repente y finalmente tienes un espacio para construir un movimiento anarquista (dado a los cambios hecho por los chavistas), ¿no crees que parte del trabajo adelante es de proteger las condiciones que ahora hace posible este tipo de esfuerzo?
>
>Les quiero decir que me da un poco de risa y mucho asco la forma en
>que ustedes ven el "proceso" venezolano. No han dicho mucho sobre
>las impresionantes marchas de la oposición al gobierno, y dicen con
>una propiedad adquirida "quien sabe donde", que la mayoría apoya al
>presidente Chavez.
Lo saco de los resultados de seis elecciones nacionales en solo 5 años. No podemos confiar en las "encuestas cocidas" por la burguesia y Golpevisión. Y es muy muy claro que las marchas que describes tú son mayoriamente de las clases altas y de la pequeña burguesía. Como he escrito: es "la rebelión de los malcriados." Seis elecciones en cuatro años es lo que decide quien tiene la mayoria. Ya estoy dudando tu anarquismo porque si no puedes ver este hecho basico, no entiendes que anarquismo, por definición, es democrático.
Les recuerdo el ridículo que hace Ignacio Ramonet
>cada vez que escribe sobre Venezuela y sobre el presidente Chavez,
>donde prácticamente lo cataloga como "el presidente perfecto";
>eviten caer en lo mismo, por su dignidad.
Mi dignidad no requiere ninguna defensa. Yo la tengo. La he tenido por un cuarto-siglo de participación en las luchas sociales, las victorias resultadas, y la gran red de gente (incluso muchos anarquistas de carne y hueso quienes, como yo, no solo hablan pero luchan y afrentan las consequencias con valor) con que colaboro y con que tenemos el concepto de Kropotkin de "Ayuda Mutua".
Por tu información, Ignacio Ramonet no se considera "ridiculo" como tu imaginas o deseas. Es uno de los periodistas mas destacados y respetados en el mundo. Solo la burguesía venezolana y los otros poderes molestos por su gran trabajo como periodista auténtico estan en acuerdo contigo. Pues, ya veo otra duda en tu auto-clasificación como anarquista: Porque un anarquista verdadero es capaz de ver cuales periodistas son los instrumentos de los poderosos y cuales luchan al lado de nosotros. Ramonet lucha a nuestro lado, y el hecho que da rabia a los malcriados comprueba su valor.
El presidente no ha
>cumplido nada de lo que ha dicho hasta ahora, aparte de lo que hace
>por la televisión, porque si bien hay una guerra mediática, pues la
>hay de lado y lado, ya que mientras unos "manipulan" la información,
>pues otros la "deforman" hasta hacer de ella no mas que un panfleto
>político que se ve, se lee y se escucha. Algo parecido, y con todo
>el respeto que merecen, a lo que están haciendo Uds.
Pues, si no entiendes la diferencia entre de cadenas de televisión y periodicos capitalistas y un panfleto, y la nivel de poder que tiene cada uno en la sociedad, otra vez dudo tu anarquismo. Un anarquista tiene conocimiento y consciencia de la lucha entre de clases, y no confunde Golpevisión o Gustavo Cisneros o los New York Times con un panfletero pobre. Las grandes companias de medios comerciales han robado el espacio del aire publico para transmitir sus mentiras, y lo hace para hacer dinero y poder. Un panfletero puede ser correcto o no correcto, pero no hace daño a la sociedad ni ha robado lo que pertenece al publico - los "airwaves" - para hacerlo.
Ya me pareces mas de la pequeña burquesía que anarquista.
>
>Si bien, los "lideres" de la oposición, como Carlos Ortega que es un
>corrupto, como los viejos partidos que destruyeron al país. Si bien
>el paro ha sido mortal para los venezolanos que han sufrido las
>consecuencias directas de esto y si bien es injusto que por querer
>obtener el poder político los golpistas quieran acabar con medio
>país; vale recordar a quien hace 11 años trato de obtener el poder
>mediante un golpe militar en el cual fueron asesinados civiles y
>soldados que no tenían nada que ver con eso, ya que Chavez tiene
>rabo de paja y se le puede quemar en cualquier momento.
>
>Si se catalogan de anarquistas, me pregunto, ¿por qué ustedes apoyan
>a este gobierno?, si este esta regido por un solo hombre que se dice
>"generador de esperanzas" y cuyo movimiento se basa en que un hombre
>o grupo de hombres guíen a las masas o "rebaño" y les administren
>justicia, riquezas y demás. Es un estado mesiánico y tan corrupto
>como el de los golpistas que gobernaron antes y quieren derrocarlo a
>él.
Otra vez, no tienes ojos o no quieres usarlos. "Tan corrupto como el de los golpistas" es un dicho sin credibilidad. Ya te estás cagando y, ademas, claramente que eres golpista. Pues, tú no eres un anarquista. Tú te has revelado como mi enemigo. Nos vemos a las barricadas, porque tu estás con los ricos y yo con los pobres y hay que resolver esto con lucha.
>
>Les aclaro que la gente que se opone al régimen solo sigue los
>lineamientos de la "coordinadora democrática", mas esta conciente de
>que sus voceros no son hombres de bien, ni tampoco quieren regresar
>al pasado, es decir, no los quieren a ellos como sus gobernantes.
Pues, ésta gente es tontísima: Si la "Coordinadora Escualida" logran, ¿quien piensas va a tomar el poder? Es muy sencillo: los mismos golpistas como Fernandez y Ortega y Carmona y Andres Perez y Cisneros se apoderan otra vez del país. Cualquier pendejo que "no los quieren a ellos como sus gobernantes" pero todavie "sigue sus linamientos" está marchando hacia fascismo.
>
>Me gustaría que por favor se dedicaran un poco mas a ser objetivos
Ningun hombre o mujer honesto se define como objectivo: El periodista que auto-defiene como objectivo es ya un bobo y mentiroso. No existe la objectividad en este mundo. Es otro juego de la burguesía, este concepto tan nefasto como objectividad.
y
>a ver lo que ocurre en este país con el lente de la verdad y la
>libertad, ya que no queremos que cuenten nuestra historia de una
>manera tan distorsionada.
>
>La abolición de los estados empieza por abrir los ojos. Por favor,
>contribuyan con nosotros con la voz de la noticia veraz, y desde su
>perspectiva política no pierdan la objetividad.
>
>Un saludo libertario: Daniel Certain Sintjago (venezolano).
>
Tu saludo ni es libertario ni anarquista. No lo accepto. Al contrario, te opongo hasta que te pones al lado de los pobres y las condiciones conducivas a un movimiento anarquista verdadero. Pero hasta ahora, tus palabras me caen como los de los otros escualidos malcriados.
Alberto Giordano
THANKS TO MY OBJECTIVE MIND, I PREFER TO SILENCE UNTIL MY IDEAS CAN BE READ WITHOUT BEING TAKEN AS A 'ESCUALIDOS' ALLIED THINKIN'. ALSO THEY CAN BE READING HERE TO GET IDEAS AGAINST CHAVEZ, IT HAPPENED ALREADY TO OTHER FELLOW ECOLOGISTS WHO WROTE HONEST CRITICS TO THE CHAVEZ BAD ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECOLOGIC POSITIONS.
JUST A LAST LINE: If Al Jordano is an Anarchist, then Anarchism Sucks!
TRASTOR-
Also visit http://www.bolivarianos.net to learn about cooperatives, Bolivarian Circles and much more...
Visit http://www.bolivariancircles.net for a brief background Venezuela and events of the first years of the Revolution. Buy Venezuelan revolutionary music and watch videos of the coup and counter-coup. Read the Bolivarian Constitution IN ENGLISH
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.