President Hugo Chávez interviewed by Marta Harnecker, Monthly Review, Sept. 2005

This article is excerpted from Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker published by Monthly Review Press. The book covers a wide range of topics, including Chávez’s political formation, the transformation currently taking place in Venezuela, and its place in the global context. In what follows, Chávez recounts the events of the failed coup d’etat of April 11, 2002.—Eds.

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Marva group of Jewish-American adolescents playing soldiers, and receiving a dangerous bath of Zionist chauvinism and the “correctness” of violence to solve political issues.

BY CHRIS HEDGES

CROSSPOST: http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20071001_israels_toy_soldiers/ ||| Posted on Oct 1, 2007

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace. Read the rest of this entry »

The Iranian President at the United Nations.

COMMENTARY By Jerry Mazza /•\ Online Journal Associate Editor | Dateline: Sep 26, 2007 // Fraternal crosspost

The Ahmadinejad visit to New York provided the media and its associated political class with yet another feeding frenzy to exercise their well developed talent for high-handed hypocrisy. Obviously it helps when the target is long preceded by and shrouded in obstinate ignorance and consequent confusion in a culture where history is only of peripheral interest, and where vociferous Zionism has a de facto chokehold on almost all critical institutions—from Congress to the media, and certainly academia. It also doesn’t help matters much that the Iranian leader—like most US imperial targets—is scarcely adept at juggling the symbols of American propaganda, and is often quite skilled at shooting himself in the foot. Like many smaller-power leaders who stand in defiance to probably the most hypocritical empire on record, they do not seem to fully understand the importance of communicating clearly and forthrightly with the US public above and through the curtain of thick distortions certain to be deployed by the corporate media and professional politicians (two sides of the same coin). And therein they miss fine opportunities to neutralize at least some of the poison being continuously spread around by these agents of imperial propaganda as they character assassinate the leaders and cultures marked for eventual physical attacks. It’s high time these leaders made an effort to understand and master this very special but essential language that could—up to a point—lessen the probabilities of such an attack.—Eds.

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Sheehan friends and relatives in demonstration in Virginia. Cindy presents a HUGE problem to the system’s apologists: a person of unshakable conviction who is firmly “on the left.” So far efforts at character assessination have failed, but should she gain public office, the most likely tack will be to kill her credibility with faint praise, suggesting she’s too “naive” about the world, she’s a one-trick pony, and so on. Media whores have their work cut out for them with Cindy.

BY CINDY SHEEHAN Dateline: September 19th, 2007

I am consistently amazed at things that right-wing nut jobs throw at me to justify their support of an unjustifiable war. Seriously, when you watch Generals, Ambassadors, Senators and Congress Reps and pundits who still cheerlead for a miserable, failed and murderous policy you can almost see the skepticism in their eyes, too. They know they are lying for their masters now, if they, like George and Dick didn’t always know they were lying. Read the rest of this entry »

“Hiya folks, I’m John Kerry. I’m full of shit and how do you like it?!” Extrapolate Kerry’s name for any name in the Democrats’ leadership roster, not to mention the GOP, and you get closer to the unspoken truth.

BY BILL VAN AUKEN Dateline: 19 September 2007 World Socialist Web Site | A fraternal site

Little more than 10 months after winning the leadership of both houses of the US Congress thanks to a swelling tide of opposition to the war in Iraq, the Democratic Party has largely abandoned even the pretense of a struggle to bring the war to an end. Read the rest of this entry »

BUSH UNMASKED, By Molly Ivins. FROM THE CLASSIC FILES OF ALLEN L ROLAND Dateline: Tuesday, September 18, 2007


“Out Bush murderer!” screams this billboard in Uruguay during Bush’s recent trip to Latin America. Apparently many foreigners see what “W” is all about better than many Americans.

It’s not that he’s mean. It’s just that when it comes to seeing how his policies affect people, George W. Bush doesn’t have a clue : —Molly Ivins

TO FULLY UNDERSTAND George W Bush ~ you must listen to fellow Texan and columnist Molly Ivins who interprets why George Bush ” is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people .” Read the rest of this entry »

The Caudillo in winter, fading into history with all honors and total impunity. Certainly persona most grata in Washington.

BY VICENTE NAVARRO; September 15-16, 2007

According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration), who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator died, to 1978, when the first democratically elected government was installed, the U.S. government actively supported the development of democracy in Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Greenspan, libertarian Republican and former controversial skipper of the Federal Reserve system, has finally found his voice to denounce George W Bush, albeit 1.2 millions lives (and still counting) too late…Thank you, Alan.

By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York
Sunday September 16, 2007
The Observer | GUARDIAN Unlimited [U.K.]

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.
Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets. Read the rest of this entry »

Gen. Petraeus…”ass-kissing little chickenshit” and wholly owned subsidiary of Bushco. Careerism, as usual, trumps duty.
BY GARETH PORTER
Dateline crosspost: 9.14.07 / http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

The debate about whether Americans should stay or leave Iraq after four years of brutal occupation is surreal because it continues to be underwritten by enormous lies. Plain and simple, the US elites invaded Iraq to rob that nation at gunpoint of its major resource, oil, and all the current foot-dragging is simply to accommodate stateside politics to the ensuing debacle, while clinging to some “solution” that might provide a fig leaf for an indefinite US military presence in that region. The essay we reproduce below is an excellent dissection of the principal lies feeding the confusion, as usual with ample complicity on the part of the corporate media, which through shoddy work, or cynical collaboration, effectively prolongs the agony of Iraq. The evidence that the mass media are not doing their job is everywhere. Just consider for a moment the following astonishing facts—astonishing in their sheer obscenity when put in the context of so much want and misery in the world, and that most Americans never heard of them— collected by Doug Henwood for one of his remarkable essays, and published back in 2003:

“LIGHTNESS”

In the early days of the war, when things weren’t going so well for the “coalition,” it was said that the force was too light. But after the sandstorm cleared and the snipers were mowed down, that alleged lightness became a widely praised virtue. But that force was light only by American standards: 300,000 troops; an endless rain of Tomahawks, JDAMs, and MOABs; thousands of vehicles, from Humvees to Abrams tanks; hundreds of aircraft, from Apaches to B-1s; several flotillas of naval support - and enormous quantities of expensive petroleum products. It takes five gallons of fuel just to start an Abrams tank, and after that it gets a mile per gallon. And filling one up is no bargain. Though the military buys fuel at a wholesale price of 84¢ a gallon, after all the expenses of getting it to the front lines are added in, the final cost is about $150 a gallon. That’s a steal compared to Afghanistan, where fuel is helicoptered in, pushing the cost to $600/gallon. Rummy’s “lightness” is of the sort that only a $10 trillion economy can afford.

Wrap your mind around those little facts before you read the rest of the indictment.—Eds.
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BY JOHN TIRMAN, AlterNet
Posted on November 28, 2006, Printed on September 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/44771/ Read the rest of this entry »