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Title: Chavez: A Personal Tribute
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Published: Mar 8, 2013
Author: Stephen Lendman
Post Date: 2013-03-08 02:30:40 by Stephen Lendman
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Views: 128
Comments: 4

Chavez: A Personal Tribute
by Stephen Lendman
He's gone. His two-year cancer struggle ended. It claimed him. He's sorely missed.
He was one of Latin America's most notable leaders. His charisma was special. It was real. His spirit lives.
An era ended with his passing. He was the world's leading anti-imperialist hero. He spoke truth to power. He did so courageously. He risked his life doing it.
Obama may have ordered him killed. Very likely he did. Believe it. Chavez did. He had good reason to do so. He said it openly. Castro warned him. He explained how imperial Washington works.
Its rap sheet makes serial killers look saintly by comparison. State-sponsored murder is official policy. So is ravaging humanity ruthlessly.
Washington does it for wealth, power and dominance. It spurns rule of law principles, democratic values and popular needs.
Chavez was polar opposite. He championed democracy. He established the real thing. He defended civil and human rights.
He operated no secret prisons. He didn't invade his neighbors. He engaged them cooperatively. He valued unity and world solidarity. He abhorred torture. He advocated peace, not war.
He abolished neoliberal harshness. He championed populism. Venezuelans loved him for doing so. They elected him overwhelmingly four times.
They rallied supportively for him publicly. They did so often. At times, millions turned out.
He established free, open and fair elections. Jimmy Carter calls them the world's best. He said so for good reason. They shame America's sham process.
He valued Venezuela's independence. He fought hard to keep it. He refused to surrender to Washington.
His used Venezuela's oil wealth responsibly. He lifted millions from poverty. He created economic growth and jobs. He provided essential social services. Major ones are institutionalized.
He's loved and admired worldwide. He's hated for his virtues. He made promises and kept them.
He cared about ordinary people. He showed it. His legacy won't be forgotten.
Chavismo lives! Bolivarianism is real. It's part of Venezuela's culture. It represents democratic equity and justice.
Venezuelans have the real thing. It reflects Simon Bolivar's vision. He defeated the Spanish. He liberated half of South America. He advocated using national wealth responsibly, fairly and equitably.
He strove to overcome the imperial curse. It "plague(d) Latin America with misery in the name of liberty," he said.
Chavez was his modern-day incarnation. Chavismo reflects Bolivarian principles. He established them. They're hardwired. They won't change. Venezuelans deplore their ugly past. They won’t go back.
Chavez was the rarest of political leaders. He was the exception proving the rule. He cared more about people than power. He had much more to do.
New leadership will advance his progressive agenda. Maduro's up to the challenge. He'll surprise people. So did Chavez.
Doing the right thing takes time. Great struggles aren't won easily or quickly. Transforming generations of oligarch rule is a longterm project. United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leaders prioritize it.
Dark forces oppose them. Profiteers want things their way. Washington's openly hostile. People power challenges its menace. Chavez did so courageously.
James Petras said "(n)o President in the history of Venezuela (or the Americas did) more to create a sense of national identity."
"He has defended the country with valor and integrity. He has preserved and advanced democratic institutions against US and client attempts to destabilize and destroy the constitutional order."
He "created an extensive social welfare net which has raised millions from poverty, eliminated illiteracy and provided a universal free public health system."
He "successfully engaged in consequential international economic aid programs, providing oil at reduced cost to poor countries in Central America and the Caribbean."
New challenging struggles remain. Dark forces never rest. They plot new anti-populist schemes. Transitioning to equitable governance is treacherous. Doing so faces formidable obstacles.
Chavez tread carefully doing it. He accomplished wonders in 14 years. Petras urged him to do more. Control the commanding heights, he said. Above all he stressed banking and finance. Money power matters most.
Chavez did much already. Under Article 156(11) of Venezuela's Bolivarian Constitution, National Money Power controls:
"Regulation of central banking, the monetary system, foreign currency, the financial and capital market system and the issuance and mintage of currency."
Under Section Three: National Monetary System, Article 318:
"The monetary competence of National Authority shall necessarily be exercised exclusively by the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV)."
Its "fundamental objective....is to achieve price stability and preserve the internal and foreign exchange value of the monetary unit."
"The Venezuelan Central Bank is a public-law juridical person with autonomy to formulate and implement policies within its sphere of competence."
Article 319 says it "shall be governed by the principle of public responsibility."
"Failure to do so "shall result in removal of the Board of Directors."
It "shall be subject to oversight by the Office of the General Comptroller of the Republic..."
Under Venezuela's 2010 Organic Law on the Domestic Financial System, banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, and other financial institutions "have the obligation of collaborating with sectors of the productive, popular communal economy through healthy financial intermediation, inspired by the spirit of productive transformation."
In other words, their mandate includes funding traditional economic sectors. They're also responsible for social and communal production entities and related organizations.
Advancing collective savings is required. So is promoting alternative communal investments.
Venezuelan law mandates its central bank to adapt its "legal, administrative and functional structure to the goals of the production model, and the Central Bank may not be detached from the actual needs of the economy."
Its operations must "meet the objectives of a socialist state." It's the law of the land in a mostly private economy.
Millions of Venezuelans mourn Chavez's passing. His body lies in state. It's in Caracas' Military School. It's in a half-open casket.
A Friday state funeral is planned. Heads of state will attend. So will numerous other dignitaries. Expect many there. Venezuelans chant "Chavez lives. The struggle goes on."
Venezuela declared seven days of mourning. Other countries declared three. They include Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Iran and Belarus. Perhaps others will join them.
At the request of Cuba's UN ambassador, the Human Rights Council declared one minute of silence. It did so on March 6.
A Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declaration expressed "profound solidarity with the people and government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and particularly with the family and friends of comandante Chavez."
"It’s difficult to accept this painful event. His passing moves all of us. An exceptional, extraordinary, respected, and admired man at a world level has stopped physically existing."
In March 2006, I wrote Chavez an open letter. It was long and detailed. It expressed support. I explained who I am. I told him why I care.
I said what he already knew. Dark forces targeted him for removal. I told him to take precautions. He didn't need me to explain.
"I champion all you've done and tell people who'll listen if you ever tire of ruling Venezuela," we need you in America.
"Your spirit and glorious revolution" inspire me. Keep it flourishing, growing and spreading, I urged.
I support you openly, I said. I hope you'll "survive and succeed unimpeded." God bless. Most sincerely. Steve Lendman.
Notable Chavez Quotes
"When imperialism feels weak," he said, "it resorts to brute force."
"The attacks on Venezuela are a sign of weakness, ideological weakness."
"Nowadays almost nobody defends neoliberalism."
At the January 2005 World Social Forum, he said:
"It is impossible within the framework of the capitalist system to solve the grave problems of poverty of the majority of the world’s population."
"We must transcend capitalism. But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion as the Soviet Union."
"We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project, and a path…a new type of socialism, a humanist one, that puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything."
"Just look at the internal repression inside the United States, the Patriot Act, which is a repressive law against U.S. citizens."
"They have put in jail a group of journalists for not revealing their sources. They won't allow them to take pictures of the bodies of the dead soldiers, many of them Latinos, coming from Iraq. Those are signs of Goliath's weaknesses."
"The south also exists."
"The future of the north depends on the south."
"If we don't make that better world possible, if we fail, and through the rifles of the US marines, and through Mr. Bush's murderous bombs, if there is no coincidence and organization necessary in the south to resist the offensive of neo-imperialism, and the Bush doctrine is imposed upon the world, the world will be destroyed."
"Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism."
"But capitalism can not be transcended through capitalism itself."
"It must be done through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice."
"I’m also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington.
"We have to re-invent socialism. It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition."
"Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services."
"They can’t be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights."
"The grand destroyer of the world, and the greatest threat….is represented by US imperialism."
"Let the dogs of the empire bark. That's their job. Ours is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people."
He called George Bush a "donkey." "Mr. Danger." "Coward." "Assassin." "Genocid(ist)."
He called him a "drunk," a "sick man, a psychologically ill man."
At the UN in 2006, he called Bush the "Devil. The Devil is right here at home. The Devil, the Devil himself, is right in the house."
"And the Devil came here yesterday….Right here. And it smells of sulphur still today."
He "came here talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world."
In 2010, he told Hillary Clinton to resign. "It's the least you can do. Resign, along with those other spies and delinquents working in the State Department."
In 2011, he said Gaddafi "will be remembered as a great fighter, a revolutionary and martyr. They assassinated him. It is another outrage."
After his October 2012 reelection, he said he'd deepen socialism. He'd do so in the next six years. Many problems need addressing, he stressed. He promised to keep working to alleviate them.
Two weeks before his death, he returned home from Cuba. He told supporters "We have arrived again in Venezuela. Thank God. Thanks to my beloved country."
On March 5, he passed. Chavismo lives!
Viva Chavez! Viva Chavismo! Viva Bolivarianism! Viva Venezuela! Valor y fuerza (Courage and strength)! Hasta la victoria siempre (Onward to victory)!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
http://www.dailycensored.com/chavez-a-personal-tribute/
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#1. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
All aboard -- The NO PARTY TRAIN - !

There was a time (when I was much younger) when I would have read this article and used it for bird cage liner - because I trusted the US Govt. Those days are so far gone that I now have an unbelieveably cynical view of the US Govt, and its lap dog media, and every other part of what we call FEDERAL.
I watched a documentary video some years ago wherein it detailed a coup against Chavez. They dragged him away from his residence and held him for hours before the masses collected in the streets of Venezuela and demanded his return.
I dread the days ahead for Amerika. There is going to be a lot of turmoil and death because the elitists are also psychopaths or maybe even worse. The people here in Amerika haven't yet hit that critical threshhold of pain that Gerald Celente speaks of where they've lost it all ... and then LOSE IT.
I think its pitiful that Amerikans have become so self-centered that they aren't able to organize against the tyranny, shut down the banks, burn the media liars out, and shut down D.C.
It's time for the military and police in Amerika to publicly announce their support for the people, the Constitution and liberty - it's time for this communist Kenyan to be de-throned and his pack of court jesters and czars incarcerated or hung. Who would have ever imagined Americans tolerating the shit that this monster has promoted from day one.
If anyone thinks little pussies like Rand Paul are going to bring back liberty they should pull their head out of their yarmulke, grab a pitchfork and head for D.C. All the bullshit that oozes out of D.C. is theatrics meant to assuage the masses and make them feel better about their enslavement.
Amerika, get off of your fucking knees !
We should all be livid. Stop acting like docile, mentally castrated pussies and grow a pair. It's time to get in their face. Why should we speak in hushed tones and act all polite when we are being raped every day?
noone222 posted on 2013-03-08 7:23:01 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#2. To: noone222 (#1)
Amen - thanks.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod posted on 2013-03-08 7:45:34 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#3. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
He operated no secret prisons. He didn't invade his neighbors. He engaged them cooperatively. He valued unity and world solidarity. He abhorred torture. He advocated peace, not war.

These commies are everywhere.
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
tom007 posted on 2013-03-08 8:18:50 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#4. To: All (#2)
another viewpoint -

Getting Rich by Fighting for the Poor Sultan Knish ^ | March 07, 2013

Hugo Chavez's death was met with tributes from Iran, Bolivia, China and El Salvador. The Western left did not waste much time adding their withered roses to El Comandante's coffin. George Galloway called him another Spartacus. Jimmy Carter described him as a leader who fought for the "neglected and trampled". Michael Moore praised him for declaring that the oil belongs to the people.
Whether or not the oil belongs to the people is a matter of some debate considering how much of it seemed to end up in Chavez's pocket.
Chavez died with an estimated net worth of 2 billion dollars making him the 4th richest man in Venezuela and the 49th richest man in Latin America. For a while, Chavez weathered attacks from the media empire of Gustavo A. Cisneros, the richest man in Venezuela. Then before the 2004 election, their mutual friend Jimmy Carter brokered an agreement between them. Cisneros' media stopped criticizing Chavez and both men bent to the task of getting even richer.
While the Bolivarian Spartacus lined his pockets with oil money, Venezuela's middle-class was struggling to get by in a country where the private sector had imploded. Income increased on paper, but decreased in reality as inflation increases ate the difference. Around the same time that Comrade Hugo was launching the third phase of his Bolivarian Revolution, inflation had decreased household income 8.8 percent while consumer goods prices increased 27 percent.
On his deathbed, Hugo Chavez devalued his country's currency for the fifth time by 32 percent, after tripling the deficit during his previous term when the national debt had increased by 90 percent. From 2008 to 2011, Chavez's oil-rich government increased the debt by nearly 50 billion in a country of less than 30 million. That same year, The Economist speculated that Venezuela might go bankrupt.
Chavez had swollen the ranks of Venezuela's public employees to 2.5 million in a country where the 15-64 population numbered only 18 million. With 1 public employee to every 7 working adults, the entire mess was subsidized by oil exports and debt. When the price of oil fell, only debt was left.
Those public employees became Chavez's campaign staff with no choice but to vote for him or see their positions wiped out to keep the economy from crashing. And they won him one last election.
The dead tyrant leaves behind the lowest GDP growth rate and highest inflation rate in Latin America. He leaves behind an economy where more than half the population depends on government benefits or government jobs. He leaves behind a giant pile of debt for the people and 2 billion dollars in misappropriated oil money for his heirs.
But we don't need to look to a leftist banana republic south of the border to see how profitable fighting for the poor can be.
7 of the 10 richest counties in America are now in the Washington D.C. area. Arlington County alone added $6,000 to its average income in one year alone. D.C. and its bedroom communities got rich at twice the rate of the rest of the country and in the last election; Obama won 8 of the 10 richest counties in the country.
Washington D.C. is richer than Silicon Valley. Median income in the D.C. area has hit $84,523 despite the city itself having horrendous unemployment and poverty statistics. The top 5 percent in D.C. earns 60% more than the top 5 percent in other cities and 54 times what the bottom fifth earns in that same city.
This wealth of government money isn't a rising tide that lifts all boats. Income inequality in Washington D.C. is one of the worst in the nation. For families with children, the income inequality level in D.C. is double the average for the rest of the country.
But when you concentrate the wealth of the land in a single imperial city, then you end up with a sharp gap between the poor and the fighters for the poor. Mid-level jobs are disappearing, but high-level jobs continue to grow. Small businesses are going out of business, but lawyers and consultants are being hired at a breathtaking rate.
Washington D.C. has the highest concentration of lawyers in the country. 1 out of every 12 city residents is a lawyer. 1 in 25 of the country's lawyers lives in Washington D.C. In 2009, the Office of Personnel Management reported that there were 31,797 practicing lawyers in the Federal government earning an average salary of $127,500 a year. Or to put it another way, the taxpayers were spending double Hugo Chavez's 2 billion dollar net worth each year just to pay the lawyers.
That was in 2009. The numbers have undoubtedly gotten much worse since.
That same year there were 383,000 federal civilian workers with six figure salaries. Multiply that and you get all the debt that Hugo Chavez dumped on Venezuela being dumped out in a single year on American taxpayers.
The number of Federal civilian employees is only slightly higher than in Chavez's utopian Socialist paradise, but average Federal employee salary clocks in at a mean $75,000. The closest private sector match to working for Uncle Sam, in a non-military position, is working for Microsoft.
Federal civilian employee wages and benefits run around $200 billion. The end of the pay freeze that wasn't really a pay freeze alone added $763,125,000 to the Federal budget. Or to put it another way, the cost of the Federal workforce in a single year is more than double Venezuela's entire national debt.
During Nixon's first year in office, $200 billion would have covered the entire Federal budget. Now it's just the paychecks. In the United States Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees welfare and food stamps, among other things, 1,461 of HHS' 64,750 employees earn over $155,000.
While the Obama Administration fires marines, it hires more civilian employees. 101 new Federal employees have been hired every day of Obama's first term in office. In 1962, there were more American military personnel than Federal civilian employees. The number of military personnel has dropped sharply, but the number of civilian employees is higher now than it was then. And their salaries have become much higher.
But the civilian employees are only part of the picture. The massive deficit spending has turned Washington D.C. into a treasure trove of government grants and stimulus plans on the favor train. The national debt grew by 6 trillion dollars in one term of Obama adding $50,521 in debt per household. That money was used to buy favors and support across the country.
While Obama ran on a platform of taking care of the poor, he was raiding the social safety net to buy support from a coalition of billionaires that paid him back with bundled contributions and SuperPACs. Green Energy tycoons got rich on loans and grants, while the middle class imploded. Billions in taxpayer money was traded for millions and hundreds of thousands in contributions in one of the dirtiest deals to take place outside an actual banana republic.
Like Chavez, Obama presides over a poorer country whose poor are convinced that he is the only thing standing between them and absolute poverty. Deficit spending and high debt has destroyed any potential for GDP growth leaving America looking like an oversized version of Venezuela.
The new America is not a booming economy, but a political power structure built on unsustainable spending. Like Chavez, Obama has created an impossible trap that leaves half the country dependent on him and leaves his opponents with no alternative but to propose some form of austerity. It is an economic kamikaze maneuver that invariably ends with economic or political destruction.
Obama, like Chavez, has made economic recovery structurally impossible, perpetuating poverty in order to profit politically from the national state of misery. Chavez died before the consequences of his economic policies caught up with Venezuela. Like Chavez, Obama won a contentious election, but he has no easy escape from the economic destruction coming up on the road ahead. Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Cente
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod posted on 2013-03-08 8:20:14 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
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