Obama In Jerusalem: Debunking Myth-Information

Following are excerpt's from Obama's speech to young Israeli Jews, followed by Legalienate efforts to translate the ideological distortions into standard English.

"It’s a story (Israel's) about finding freedom in your own land."

Israel was founded mostly by Eastern European Jewry colonizing and displacing a large indigenous Arab majority. So Israel is really a story about eliminating freedom in someone else's land (the Palestinians').

"For the Jewish people, the journey to the promise of the state of Israel wound through countless generations."

Not really. The modern Zionist movement began a little over a century ago. Zionist myth-makers love to draw a straight line from Biblical Israel to today's Jewish-supremacist state, blurring distinctions between Hebrew, Isrealite, Judean, Jewish, and Judaism. But this deliberately obscures the reality that those were different people from different times of history with different ways of life.

"Israel has achieved all this even as it’s overcome relentless threats to its security, through the courage of the Israel Defense Forces and a citizenry that is so resilient in the face of terror."

How much courage is involved in massacring civilians? This is what the IDF is famous for. And just why are there "relentless threats" to Israeli security? Because Israel is an apartheid state founded on the land of the Arabs it tortures, murders, and despises. How can there NOT be constant security threats when that is the case? As for Jewish "resilience," wouldn't a better word be "blindness?"

"Israel has built unbreakable bonds of friendship with my country, the United States of America."

The bonds are of power and wealth, not "friendship," and they link elite groups in the two countries, not the general populations. Organized Jewry would like us to believe otherwise, but there is no evidence that the American people are in love with the Jewish state, in spite of constant propaganda to that effect pouring through virtually every media outlet in the United States.

"When I consider Israel’s security, I think about children like Osher Twito, who I met in Sderot. (Applause.) Children, the same age as my own daughters, who went to bed at night fearful that a rocket would land in their bedroom simply because of who they are and where they live. . . those children deserve to sleep better at night."

Security is a buzz word for Jewish domination. There is no reason one should expect to have security if one is dedicated to subjugating others, as Israel is. Secondly, the implication of Jew hatred in Obama's comment here is false. Israel has repeatedly invaded Lebanon, massacring thousands of civilians, and the few rockets that have hit Israel are entirely a result of that repeated aggression, not hatred for Jews per se. If Israel renounces terror and aggression its children will be able to sleep peacefully. But Obama is not calling for that.

" . . .we have stood up for Israel’s right to defend itself. And that’s why Israel has a right to expect Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist."

In point of fact, the U.S. has stood up for Israel's presumed right to commit endless acts of terror and aggression, which is illegal under international law. Obama is here calling for Hamas to renounce its right of self-defense, which is an unalienable right of all peoples. As for recognizing "Israel's right to exist," there is no right to exist for any state under international law. States exist, and have certain non-exclusive rights, but no state has a unique right to continue existing forever, which is what Israel is demanding.

" . . .every country that values justice should call Hezbollah what it truly is, a terrorist organization."

Hezbollah is a legally elected political party in Lebanon, entirely legitimate, and its "terrorism" is defensive. The real terrorism is carried out by Israel and the U.S., and on a scale that vastly exceeds anything Hezbollah is capable of.

" . . .the world cannot tolerate an organization that murders innocent civilians, stockpiles rockets to shoot at cities and supports the massacre of men and women and children in Syria right now."

Standard Jewish supremacist propaganda aimed at yet another U.S.-sponsored regime change in the Middle East. Has that worked out well in Iraq and Libya? Obviously not. By the way, if murdering innocent civilians, stockpiling lethal weapons, and massacring men, women, and children is wrong, then the U.S. is the most objectionable state on the planet, and by a wide margin.

"The fact that Hezbollah’s ally, the Assad regime, has -- has stockpiles of chemical weapons only heightens the urgency. We will continue to cooperate closely to guard against that danger. I’ve made it clear to Bashar al-Assad and all who follow his orders: We will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people or the transfer of those weapons to terrorists. The world is watching. We will hold you accountable."

Here Obama is playing ventriloquist's dummy to Netanyahu, and with little originality. Pre-invasion Iraq, too, was said to have chemical weapons, and they never turned up. But no matter. The point of such remarks is to generate fear and hatred, which can then be used to support another Middle East war for the benefit of Israel - paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, whose living standard is in steady decline.

"Those who adhere to the ideology of rejecting Israel’s right to exist -- they might as well reject the earth beneath them and the sky above, because Israel’s not going anywhere."

Maybe not, but who wants to live in the lunatic asylum Israel has become? The constant topic of conversation is war. Should we bomb Iran? Incinerate Lebanon? Exterminate Gazans? The great project of "in-gathering" Jews from around the world has gone into reverse. More Jews are leaving than arriving. Is that what the great dream of a Jewish state was supposed to achieve? Hardly.

"The Syrian people have the right to be freed from the grip of a dictator who would rather kill his own people than relinquish power."

The American people have the right to be freed from the grip of organized Jewry, which would rather kill every last Gentile than live in peace.

"Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. This is not a danger that can be contained -- and as president, I’ve said all options are on the table for achieving our objectives. America will do what we must to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran."

"All options are on the table" means the U.S. is willing to initiate a nuclear war to appease the Israel fanatics. There is no evidence Iran is trying to get a nuclear weapon. If it in fact gets one, it will be used for deterrence, to prevent another Iraq war, which would be far more destructive than the 2003 invasion was because Iran has substantial retaliatory capacity, even without a nuclear weapon. This is precisely what Israel objects to: the deterrent effect of an Iranian bomb on Israel's constant terrorism and aggression.

"Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with anyone who’s dedicated to its destruction . . . I genuinely believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad."

Translation: negotiations are needed, but only with the lap-dogs of imperialism that we install and support. That way we can control where the negotiations end up. But it's meaningless to negotiate with people who don't pose a threat. Those that threaten us are precisely the people we need to come to terms with. That is, if an end to violence is really our objective. But in Israel's case, it's obviously not.

Obama's kowtowing to organized Jewry's racist pre-occupation with ridding Palestine of its Arab population is a disgrace, sort of like endorsing Bull Connor's efforts to keep Birmingham all white. Whenever we hear the word "demographic threat," this is what we should remember. For Israel to surrender some fragment of Palestine it doesn't want to a "Palestinian state" is like the U.S. conceding "independence" to the South Bronx because of the "demographic threat" of so many blacks and Hispanics living there. It's racism pure and simple, and a stark rejection of the values of the civil rights era Obama claims to represent.

Watch Out...We're Surrounded!

After the tenth anniversary of the destruction of Iraq passed with the usual historic distortion and pieties from established power about the waste and rationalizations about why we had to do it, America’s bipartisan war party has even more loudly revived the same lies and logic perversion used to get support for that slaughter. Without even a hint of embarrassment, political puppets of wealth from congress to the state department to the white house are again talking about gas and chemical weapons of mass destruction, substituting Assad of Syria for Hussein of Iraq as this season’s demonic Hitler-figure to lull Americans into accepting further military crimes to perpetuate finance capital’s empire and keep our minds off the fact that it threatens to collapse on our heads.

Media fulfills its responsibility as corporate stenographer to power by reporting these charges, without a blushing reminder that this is the same puppet-speak that was only called by its rightful name after hundreds of thousands were dead, an educated class had become refugees and a materially developed secular nation had been broken up into a scattering of underdeveloped sectarian neighborhoods. This process was repeated in Libya but without invasion and simply by using NATO servants to front for our mass bombings. That assault on morality and reason included the usual charges of genocide – when anyone dies in a foreign country our rulers don’t like, it’s called genocide - and new descent into the sewers of western consciousness with tales of mass rapes committed by monsters given Viagra by the evil dictator. Though not accepted by any but the most tortured minds - our leaders - these tales from the toilets of degeneracy helped reduce another nation developed along lines not totally in keeping with the desires of the Master-Race-Chosen-People deities of the west. Libya was transformed into a shattered place with freedom for high finance and oil companies and near chaos for almost everyone else. The latest atrocities in Syria seem to indicate that while the imperial cabal dominated by the MRCP minority of multi-billionaires and their servants flounders in deadly crisis, it’s intention is not only to maintain the diseased system but spread its affliction until the entire global population joins the terminal patients in the universal intensive care ward that is being created by global capitalism.

The banking crisis that began in the USA and spread to Europe has brought near total destruction of the social democratic policies that had previously saved capitalism. The economic cancer that gripped the world in the 1930s was placed in remission for more than a generation by the relatively enlightened – for capital - policies called Keynesianism. These created government spending to prop up anarchic markets that were collapsing under exclusive minority control. It wisely – for capital - used tax money to create jobs, food, clothing and shelter for great masses of people, so that they might not only refrain from revolting against minority power, but also consume all the goods and services they created in order to profit that minority.

The material improvement in the lives of many – though far from most – enabled a generation of relative peaceful control for great wealth in the west, even while the world was consumed by more wars that killed more millions, forgotten because unlike the Euros who perished in wars one and two, these were mostly from the darker skinned members of our race, the third world majority. They were and remain either colonized, neo-colonized or otherwise economically subjugated and thus remaining invisible to newly created middle classes subjected to mind numbing consciousness control and mind managing entertainment that often passes for news on TV. This newly affluent class – by peasant standards - consumed billions of dollars of mostly needless garbage advertised into being absolutely necessary-for-survival drugs, cosmetics, therapies, toys, pets, gadgets and processed foods, while financing with its tax dollars and plastic debt a massive version of fake democracy and a far more massive supply of real weapons of mass destruction.

Already badly overstretched and financed only by imaginary electronic funds backed by very real military power, imperial dictatorship is creating new problems to bolster its war state while simultaneously destroying a civil society hardly conceived by moral values but nonetheless preventing complete physical breakdown. While so-called “austerity” is employed to cut government spending – the only thing that has maintained MRCP capitalism for a generation – while at the same time attempting to militarily protect finance from any and all national models daring to attempt going a different way finds more warfare threatened, with these idiotic fantasy charges to make the public accepting of the need to cut back on their meals in order to buy more guns.

As this is written and the arms shipments to Syria increase along with the death toll and lies, the hallucinatory threat from North Korea gets headlines. This tiny nation once invaded and bombed by the USA and suffering death and destruction unknown to intellectually impoverished Americans, is said to be threatening the USA with bellicose statements. The fact that the USA has troops on its borders and regularly conducts what criminally infantile elements here call “war games” on Korean seas play no role at all in North Korea’s posture, of course. The only thing that may help them, and it is a big maybe, is that North Korea does possess nuclear weapons and could wreak terrible retaliatory havoc if the warhead in our half white house decides to go totally over the edge and attack them.

Meanwhile, the financial crisis has reached new lows in Europe, especially Cyprus where the bailout not only involves robbing taxpayers but stealing money from their bank accounts. Those in America who think this is a laughable situation might start removing their money from these corporate casinos and placing then under the mattress the way their grandparents did. Of course, authority may ultimately attempt confiscation of those mattresses so maybe the second amendment gun lobby fundamentalists have an argument approaching reason? No, but given present conditions, any crackpot theory will get some hearing. Unfortunately, the most crackpot of all, from capital central in the USA, is getting far too much.

Even the NYTIMES is Confused?

Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels,With Aid From C.I.A.

Reuters

Free Syrian Army fighters inside a house in Aleppo last week. The United States has been helping Arab governments and Turkey send arms to the rebels.

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

and then:

In ‘Spirited’ Talks, Kerry Tells Iraq to Help Stop Arms Shipments to Syria

Pool photo by Jason Reed

Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, center, in Baghdad on Sunday.

BAGHDAD — Secretary of State John Kerry told Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, on Sunday that Iraq must take steps to stop Iran from shipping arms to Syria through Iraqi airspace. But an hour and 40 minutes of discussions here, which Mr. Kerry said were sometimes “spirited,” failed to yield a breakthrough on the issue.

Obama Celebrates Iraq War Anniversary:Calls For New War With Syria

-->

While visiting Israel on behalf of AIPAC, the president reacted to news of alleged Syrian use of chemical weapons by taking a bold tone and saying “all options are on the table” and…no…that was about Iran. Anyway, he made it clear that Sadam Hussein, uh , Bashir Bin Laden, um, Adolph Hitler  or other historic figures of badness would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons or other such big killing things, especially if our friends in Israel found them nervous making.

U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. !!!!

Syrian Rebels Pick U.S. Citizen to Lead Interim Government

By ANNE BARNARD

Published: March 18, 2013

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s main exile opposition coalition elected a naturalized Syrian-born American citizen early Tuesday to be the first prime minister of an interim Syrian government, charged with funneling aid to rebels inside Syria and offering an alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

National Enquirer, U.S. Holocaust Museum To Merge

Tabloid Cites Growth Potential, Immunity to Libel As Key Factors

Michael K. Smith
Legalienation News Bureau
www.legalienate.blogspot.com

Washington D.C.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum and The National Enquirer will merge operations on Elie Wiesel's birthday, a spokesman for the tabloid announced today. Frederick Hoynes, senior sleaze editor for The Enquirer, told the National Press Club that the unprecedented public-private partnership was a "no brainer" given the Holocaust Industry's enormous audience and immunity to prosecution.

"The Holocaust Museum is part of an industry that has limitless cash flow and a permanent lock on mass readership, regardless of profit considerations," said Hoynes. "That's pretty hard to resist."

Hoynes added that libel worries were virtually non-existent in "Shoah business," where distortion and slander are protected political speech. "As you know, we've had our troubles with celebrity lawsuits," said Hoynes, "which has forced us into an unnatural preoccupation with facts. We'd rather not have that burden."

The Enquirer lost a costly lawsuit to comedic actress Carol Burnett in the 1970s, and ever since has been worried that a recurrence could force the newspaper into bankruptcy. The Enquirer's executive board has been deeply impressed by the Holocaust Industry's ability to dispatch critics to jail when they become troublesome. "Our problem," said Hoynes, "is that the public sees the burden of proof as resting with us to substantiate what we say. The exact opposite is the case in the Holocaust Industry, where the burden of proof is on the critics to prove they haven't committed heresy. Frankly, we're quite envious of that!"

The Holocaust Museum appears equally enthusiastic about the merger. Schlomo Eilam, senior engineer of public fantasy at the museum, announced that The Enquirer's impressive record of spreading alarm could help combat growing indifference to the Holocaustification of American Life. "With the death of the generation of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, it's essential that the public focus on lurid details not die with them," said in an interview with Legalienate's editors last week. Eilam pointed out that The Enquirer's demonstrated success in getting people to believe that a two-headed mother ate her babies for dessert should have little difficulty convincing people that human skin was converted to lampshades and body fat into bars of soap. "Those are the the kind of claims The Enquirer excels at making," added Eilam.

Industry analysts say it is too early to tell how the merger will affect business operations, specifically whether The Enquirer's shoot-from-the-hip fabrications will prevail, or the Holocaust Museum's preference for a more scholarly facade. The difference in style is signficant, says marketing professor Earl Dodson of the University of California at Berkeley. "Whereas the National Enquirer employs fake stupidity, the Holocaust Museum uses the genuine article."

The Enquirer's board of directors was initially skeptical about the merger, Legalienate has learned, fearing the tabloid's reputation would be damaged by the lower standards prevailing in the Holocaust Industry. "We never dreamed of destroying people professionally," says Enquirer attorney Richard Higham. "It just doesn't seem right." "Besides, once you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, that's the end of your story line and a considerable portion of your cash flow, which defeats the purpose of a tabloid," he added.

Amira Halutz, Director of Public Hysteria at the Holocaust Museum, defended the more aggressive tactics used in her profession. "It's all very well to milk the cash cow of celebrity gossip," she said. "But we're up against deeply perverted racists who hatefully demand facts and logic on a constant basis. So we don't mind The Enquirer's bottom-feeding approach to news-gathering, so long as they come up with something useful. At the end of the day, nobody remembers the mud-slinging, only whether or not something stuck."

Chavez vs. Obama

"Where Mr. Chavez dedicated (and likely gave) his life to improving the lot of Venezuela’s and the regional South’s poor and building the infrastructure of real economic and political democracy, America’s ‘liberal’ President Barack Obama claimed the right of extra-judicial assassination of the citizenry at his whim while ‘sequestering’ the economic interests of poor and working Americans to bolster the already substantial fortunes of the pirate financiers and industrialists he serves."

-----Rob Urie, "Who Will Stand Up Against the Military-Oil-Banker Mafia?" Counterpunch, March 8-10, 2013

"Obama is the voice of imperialism . . . Obama, mind your own business, devote yourself to your own country, which you have made into a disaster. Devote yourself to governing your country. Now you go looking for votes by attacking Venezuela. Don't be so irresponsible, boy. Clown. Obama, you are a clown. . . . The truth, Obama, you know what you inspire? Pity, you know, you inspire pity. Leave us alone. We are free and never again will be your colony. . . Leave us alone, Obama, let us be. Look for your votes there (in the U.S.), but by obeying the will of the people . . . You are of African heritage, but you are the shame of all African people."

-----Hugo Chavez, December 19, 2011, responding to Obama's criticism of Venezuelan policies

Time To Sequster Austerity: For Good

Time To Sequester Austerity: For Good  

“This whole planet needs a hug”

 Shock G

Many still swallow the preposterous notion that the 1% and their finances are too big to fail while the 99% and their lives are too small to succeed. That’s always been the rationale of class division, whether between royalty and serfs, masters and slaves or at present between corporate capital and the rest of humanity.

In the way that royalty bought off some peasants and slavers bought off some house negroes, present wealth divisions rely on turning working people into renters, owners and eventually debt carrying consumers of just about everything except what they might really need. But the commodity culture dependent on endless shopping by a worker majority - newly branded a middle class - to support  a small minority’s great wealth has become a culture of jobless debtors and homeless panhandlers.

While the high end minority increases its wealth at fantastic rates  which create billionaires where there once were millionaires, the working middle relies on plastic, parents, friends and a shrinking social safety net for survival and the low end is reduced to begging on the streets and sleeping in doorways. That’s not in the less materially developed parts of the world but in morally underdeveloped major american cities.

Fake prosperity, as much mental as material, has come under greater pressure over the last period with capital claiming an ever bigger share of the spoils created by its millions of upper, middle and lower class minions, however labeled by consciousness controllers to hide the fact that we are a mind-muddled class of servants to minority wealth.

An upgrade in material trappings but none at all in political power has served to keep great numbers of people quiet and at least unrebellious while remaining dependent on rich rulers and a market deity which keeps them alive by giving them cotton to pick, goods to manufacture, products to consume, a system to worship and candidates to vote for , all maintaining their condition and status as subservient to their economic masters.

Many are learning as never before that this system is not only bad for them but for the human race itself. A growing global movement is rejecting the 1% MRCP* mentality ruling the great mass of humanity  and taking us closer to going over the edge like lemmings answering an un-natural urge towards race suicide.

Whether we are among the consumers or the panhandlers, shop at Nordmarts or Wallstrom, or answer to the branding label of upscale or downscale, we must understand that the scales are controlled by minorities who lean on them to make everything heavier and costlier for everyone in order to create massive profits for themselves. You don’t need to be a Rhodes scholar to see that not only does such a system work against the interest of humanity, but it in fact owes much of its strength to Rhodes scholars who act as academic apologists for a system that keeps them among the affluent.

Whether the politicians and servant professional class of today’s consumer markets or the merchant dealers and house Negroes of yesterday’s slave markets, all operate on behalf of ownership which pays them to protect a reality that never worked for most people but is more obviously unjust at a time when neither royalty, the rich, nor slavers can monopolize information as they still monopolize wealth.

As people see the unfairness and criminality of the system that threatens far more with loss than it benefits the few with profit, it is closer to its end. That’s why there is so much panic in ruling circles and more suppression of freedom of thought and expression, along with threats of even more killing than the normal slaughter that enriches a few with the blood of so many.

Increased pressures in alleged democracies that criminalize knowledge sharing where there were supposed free flows of information  and create heavily armed military units where there used to be police departments are high-end versions of the tortures increasingly inflicted on the lower end of the global market. There, in former colonial nations which have never left the system of minority dominated majorities, the suffering increases and the demands for change do as well. This is a time of great hope for humanity, but also increasing danger as both political and natural systems under stress become too much to tolerate any longer.

Social democratic programs that maintained capital by decreasing the worst aspects of market financial anarchy are all under more pressure than ever, more so in Europe than in the USA but with ridiculous policies here catching up to those on the continent. Nonsense about profligate spending on alleged “entitlements” that leave trillions spent on imperial wars unquestioned are commonplace, with resistance only coming from outside the major circles of power. The servant class that benefits most from things as they are, whether living in the house with the master - even if downstairs in shabby rooms - or having the momentary experience of affluence with seemingly unlimited consumption of goods, services, whims and fancies – until the bill comes due – is the base of support that the 1% pays for. But neither it, nor they, can withstand the pressures of a declining ecosystem under attack by private profiteers, and a rising of humanity demanding fairness, democracy and justice.

The ridiculous notion that there is not enough to go around is perpetuated by those who use and abuse the greatest amount of environmental wealth in order to create global poverty. Austerity, if it is to exist at all, should be experienced by those who have played the biggest role in perpetuating a system that destroys and wastes in pursuit of private gain that has brought about an endangered future for the human race. It is time to permanently sequester ridiculous notions of austerity for a majority to benefit wanton waste by a minority.

“We’re on the right track baby, we were born this way”

 Lady Gaga

*Master Race Chosen People

Hugo Chavez - Lion of the Left

Raised by his grandmother in a palm-leaf, dirt-floor house that regularly flooded in the rain, he swore he would never betray his childhood of poverty and deprivation.

His grandmother taught him to read and write before he entered school. From her he also learned Venezuelan history, mixed in with family legends, and of the world's injustices, especially the economic straitjacket that strangles the poor, and of the solidarity that sometimes loosens its terrifying grip on their lives.

Growing up, Chavez traveled the world thanks to the illustrations and stories from a large four-volume encyclopedia given him by his father. In sixth grade he was chosen to give a speech to Bishop Gonzalez Ramirez, the first bishop to arrive to Chavez's hometown. This introduced him to the joys of public speaking, and his audience to the pleasure of hearing someone with a born talent for it.

His boyhood idol was Major League pitcher Isaias Latigo Chavez, from whom young Hugo derived his nickname Latigo, which means "whip" in Spanish. The nickname was particularly apt for the later political Chavez, who regularly made others feel the lash and sting of his political observations. Although Chavez never saw his baseball idol pitch, he imagined his life on the mound by listening to games by radio. When his hero was killed in a plane crash, 14-year-old Hugo felt the world cave in on top of him.

To emulate his hero, Chavez joined the military, and thanks to his own talent as a pitcher, Hugo was admitted to the Military Academy in 1971. Four years later he graduated 2nd Lieutenant with a degree in science and military arts, and a diploma in counterinsurgency. Meanwhile, his political instincts drew him towards revolution.

Though his radicalization was drawn out and complicated, a key event occurred in 1975, when Chavez, carrying out a military operation in his home state of Barinas, discovered a black Mercedes Benz hidden in the brush. Prying the trunk open with a screwdriver, he discovered a load of books by Marx and Lenin. He began to read.

Other political influences were his brother Adam, a militant of the Left Revolutionary Movement, the humanist training he received in the military, Simon Bolivar, and (later) Fidel Castro. Each left a mark on him.

The assassination of Salvador Allende in 1973 provoked in Chavez a contempt for the Pinochet-style militaries hatched at Washington's School of the Americas and spread throughout Latin America. On the other hand, Chavez also discovered Panama's Omar Torrijos and Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado, who showed him a different model of the military - popular and loyal to the people, a radical departure from imperial assassins like Pinochet.

Rebellious by nature, Chavez soon discovered the corruption and abuses of his military superiors, and he did what he could to confront these. On the anniversary of Simon Bolivar's death in 1982 Chavez and a small group of pro-Castro officers founded the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200, which began mostly as a study group but later matured into a genuine political threat.

In 1989 came a spontaneous insurrection in Caracas's poor neighborhoods, a rebellion against the austerity measures of Carlos Andres Perez's government, which was crushed in fire and blood. Thousands were killed. Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement were given a strong push forward.

In 1992 Chavez and his men rose in arms, but the rebellion failed - "for now," Chavez muttered famously - and he went to prison. His popularity grew. Upon his release, Chavez's stature seemed to grow almost as fast as Venezuela's corrupt political system collapsed. In 1998, he won the presidency with 56% of the vote, and from then on he was unstoppable. He won all elections for the subsequent 14 years (certified as the freest and fairest in the world by ex-President Jimmy Carter), while also surviving an oil industry lockout and a political coup backed by Washington.

A whirlwind of energy, Chavez lived a century in his 58 years. Sleeping but a few hours a night, he stayed up late to greet visitors, indulge his voracious reading habits, and prepare the way for all the battles yet to come. His exuberance offended the stuffed shirts of the bourgeiosie, whom he routinely embarrassed by breaking into song and dance, all the while advancing passionate political arguments none of them could answer.

He was, in short, very broadly cultured. In an age when heads of state know little and read nothing, Chavez fed his boundless intellectual curiosity with constant self-study, often calling Fidel Castro at 3 a.m. to discuss a book they were both reading. Never one to sacrifice the mind to the needs of the belly, he insisted that the Bolivarian Revolution be as much about ideas as material substance, and he warned that revolution could not be successful without the Venezuelan people becoming intellectually sophisticated.

His achievements were stupendous. He re-founded his country, freed it from colonial domination, thrust the invisible poor permanently into the national spotlight, redistributed oil revenues to benefit the Venezuelan majority, sharply reduced illiteracy and poverty (in 2011 alone the Venezuelan government handed out 146,022 homes to the poorest of the poor), radically improved public health, raised pensions and the minimum wage, mandated pay for housework, established health clinics, schools, cooperatives and popular councils throughout the country, all this while making the stagnant Venezuelan economy grow. He went far beyond European social democracy, developing non-capitalist areas with "social production companies," co-management, cooperatives, and nationalizations. At the same time, he strengthened the hand of the oil-producing countries against the international oil oligarchs, derailed Washington's "free trade" market of the Americas (substituting an alternative economic integration model based on mutual aid), and laid the foundation for a new brand of socialism in the 21st century when most people were loathe to even mention socialism.

All of this is another way of saying that he delivered real democracy to Venezuela for the first time ever, and was gratefully elected and re-elected by substantial majorities more times than any other figure in Latin American history. It now makes four years in a row that Venezuela has ranked first in the region in support for democracy, with 77% of the people registering approval of Venezuelan democracy, and 80% turning out to vote (in the U.S. turnout rarely rises much above 50%, and in mid-term elections, it's far worse).

Not bad for a "dictator" who came to office amidst a sea of neo-liberal governments ruling over peoples sunk in cynical disregard for everything political.

Sources:

Atilio A. Boron "Glory to the Brave Chavez," www.rebelion.org, March 6, 2013 (Spanish)

Luis Hernandez Navarro, "Hugo Chavez, The Poor Boy From Sabaneta," www.rebelion.org, March 8, 2013 (Spanish)

"Hugo Chavez Dead: Transformed Venezuela & Survived U.S.-Backed Coup, Now Leaves Uncertainty Behind," Democracy Now, March 6, 2013

Jeremy Corbyn MP, "Hugo Chavez - A Symbol of Hope," Morning Star online, March 6, 2013

Grahame Morris MP, "President Hugo Chavez's Critics Miss the Mark," Morning Star online, March 6, 2013

Tariq Ali, "Challenging the Washington Consensus - Hugo Chavez and Me," Counterpunch, March 7, 2013

Charles Muntaner, Juan Benach, Maria Paez Victor, "Anti-Imperialist, Socialist and Immortal Latino-American - Ah, Chavez No Se Va" Counterpunch, March 7, 2013

Holocaust Shocker: 6 Million Equals Number of Nazi Death Camps, not Dead Jews

Researchers Catalog A "Jew-Zillion" Killed in the Camps

by Michael K. Smith
Legalienation News Bureau
www.legalienate.blogspot.com

Researchers from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have concluded that the fabled six million statistic from World War II refers not to Jews exterminated by the Nazi regime, but to the number of individual death camps run by Hitler. This has forced researchers to revise the Jewish death count upwards to a "Jew-Zillion," a quantity that The Institute of Objective Zionist Science claims is a six followed by 40,000 zeros.

The total is far higher than most historians had previously estimated, according to The New York Times, which the Newspaper of Record says indicates that historians are even more infallible than they were before.

Geoffrey McGargle and Dean Martin, the lead editors of the project, have compiled the millions of sites in a 325,000 volume encyclopedia that will be housed in an airplane hangar in post-regime-change Tehran. Each volume catalogs billions of Nazi crimes, providing a comprehensive history of the "industrial assembly-line of extermination spontaneously erected by methodical madmen working without plan or bureaucratic oversight but with stupendously evil improvisational skill."

The Holocaust Museum team also created maps of the sites, which were apparently so densely concentrated in Europe that they crowded out every other German institution, sparking a protest from the Fuhrer himself when his favorite Viennese bakery was bulldozed.

The study clearly shows that all previous WWII research has been dedicated to Nazi appeasement, and that the true dimensions of the Holocaust may not be known for generations, after astronaut-historians have been able to research the Jewish death toll in Nazi-controlled galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Helmut Erhard, director of the Jerusalem-based German Institute of Perpetual Alarm, says the latest research is "astounding," and subsequent studies sure to be "even more so." "We thought we knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was," he said, "but the truth is our previous depictions look like a Club Med vacation compared to what we're finding out now."

The researchers' work may help Holocaust lawyers attempting to sue.

"How many attorney's fees have been subjected to delayed payment because of the inability to document the existence of 6 million death camps?" said Sam Grubbin, a lawyer representing attorneys. "Now we don't have to worry about that anymore."

Over the years, many scholars have worked to uncover the real numbers of victims of the Holocaust, and some have insisted the death toll is higher than what an anti-Semitic preoccupation with mathematical rigor will allow. They say that objectivity requires that the official number of Jews killed spiral in tandem with increases in Jewish settlements in Palestine.

This latest research is yet another piece of evidence that can be used to refute the viciously racist fringe movement that continues to deny what others assert, and that inexplicably objects to using the Holocaust to facilitate Israeli crimes against humanity.

Source:

"The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking," March 1, 2013, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0