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Hugo Chavez’ Vision: The Earth’s Dream

It is when Hugo Chavez says that Bolivarian Democratic Socialism is "love of the people" that the President of Venezuela proves himself to be a true Christian and a liberator. He is putting all fake Christians to shame, those fat, narrow-minded televangelists that call for war and foam at the mouth, asking for the assassinations of the great Bolivarian leader from the South.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I gratefully received advice about the danger of personality cults.  My enthusiasm for the vision of Hugo Chavez made me forget that I witnessed as a child popular enthusiasm for the good things Mussolini was doing for the people until power went to his head and lead Italy to war.  No human is immune to pride and the seduction of success. Chavez is doing good things, but he is a mortal, and I believe he would admit that he is not perfect.  Respect for dissent and respect for the Constitution are the first things Hugo Chavez spoke of upon returning to Caracas after being kidnapped during the 2002 coup.  The dangerous suppression of the U.S. Constitution by G.W. Bush with the excuse that he is the Commander in Chief in an oil war of aggression stands as a warning to all who love Democracy to keep their eyes open, no matter who is in power.

“Democratic Socialism is love of the people.”  These words of Venezuela’s President announced the birth of a different world – a just and peaceful world the youth of the entire planet believes is possible. 

Hugo Chavez’ speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations inspired my article, “Hugo Chavez and the Devil’s Recipe,” which first appeared in The Lone-Star Iconoclast of Crawford, Texas, on January 29, 2007, and later in Venezuelanalysis.com on March 15, 2007.  That story compared the vision of Mr. Chavez to the worldview of Federico Fellini, the great Italian film director.  Both Fellini and Chavez express love and empathy for the people with their work.  Fellini, as a cine-magician, helped give birth to a more human culture, and Chavez, as a revolutionary liberator and statesman, is creating a different world that may save the planet from destruction.

“Hugo Chavez and the Devil’s Recipe” attracted so much international attention that people from all over the globe asked: How is it possible to compare a great Italian film author to a visionary South American statesman?  The answer: Hugo Chavez shows by his actions that he not only loves the people, but fully understands the needs and aspirations of the world’s youth. 

Like Fellini, Chavez does not hate the rich, but knows that they are psychologically deformed by excessive and un-earned opulence and by the guilt that being oppressors of millions festers in their hearts.

The lunacy and cruelty of the global situation is caused, therefore, by the fact that both oppressors and oppressed are dehumanized by the odious reality of fear, greed, and an absurd spiritual myopia that the natural abundance of the Earth is not enough for all to share.

The rich are making themselves sick and dangerously unsafe by inflicting criminal misery on others.  The oppressed and poor are sickened by lives turned into miserable destitution and hopelessness from birth to death.

Both ‘haves” and ‘have-nots” are in different ways completely dehumanized and evermore hateful of each other.  The unhappiness of the rich and powerful is well known to the psychiatric profession.  The poor’s sickness is evident in our crowded prisons and slums.  This expanding evil eventually erupts in crime, suicidal terrorism, the reactive police state, and criminal wars of aggression.  The obscene plunder by a ravenous and blind few results in universal wage slavery and/or desperate poverty for millions, making this world dangerous and unhappy.

Chavez’s enlightened peaceful revolution is reversing this global lunacy and will even help the rich from becoming further mentally retrograde, like medieval lords.  The Bolivarian revolution will help many of these pathetic materialistic souls regain a sense of proportions, become human again, and meet life with renewed hearts.  Only a socially responsible democracy and economic justice can bring about this kind of renewal.  Such a renewal will protect reformed oppressors from the danger of growing resentment and outrage of the majority as abuses become increasingly transparent to a larger and larger portion of the world population.

Unless change comes fast enough, it will soon become self-evident — even to the simplest minds — that all of us have been fleeced of our universal birthright to share equitably in the bountiful commonwealth of this planet.  Some believe that –as the current insurgencies in various parts of the earth evidence — heightened awareness may bring back the revival of the guillotine (to use a stark illustration) as an expeditious instrument for cutting down to size despots, exploiters, oil and gas gougers, highway robbers, and all high ranking thieves in the military industrial complex.  That would restore our Republic and bring an end to the Evil Empire as fast as France got rid of its crowned heads and aristo-pigs feeding at the royal trough.

Recently, President Chavez has attracted world attention and become the recipient of increasingly vicious attacks from neo-fascist media whores in direct proportion to his growing fame as a great leader.  He is gaining a reputation as the uncompromising and outspoken nemesis of the troglodytes that turned the White House into a fetid Neolithic cave.

“Troglodytes” is a fitting offence that must be clearly understood (Thomas Paine, one of the fathers of our Republic, wrote: “He who dares not offend cannot be honest”), so here are four dictionary definitions of “troglodytes” that prove it to be an the ideal insult for the current White House simians dragging their knuckles on the carpet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: 1.  Pre-historic cave dwellers; 2.  Persons of degraded, primitive, or brutal character; 3.  Persons unacquainted with affairs of the world; 4.  Animals living underground.  Hence, President Chavez was perfectly correct to call the troglodyte-in-chief an “ass,” a “coward,” and the very incarnation of evil: “the devil.”

On Monday, December 5, 2005, the following posts appeared on an anonymous blog: Planetofa$$holes, run by political satirists who target traitors, religious fanatics, and other lunatics — like the recently departed Jarry Foulwell (good riddance) — from an underground wine cellar named: In Vino Veritas.  Their therapeutic use of insults to retain a sense of reality in our 21st Century bedlam is refreshing.

Beware of being too rational.  In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn’t become king.  He gets lynched.  ~Aldous Huxley

On March 2, 2004, in Caracas, Hugo Chavez wisely proclaimed: “George W. Bush is an IDIOT!”  With this truthful pronouncement the great President of Venezuela launched a new era of outspoken honesty in international relations, making it easier for decent people everywhere to see what global oppressors and phonies really are and to properly frame them as miserable idiots.

When a head-of-state who loves his people, as Hugo Chavez does, uses the most popular and versatile of all insults: “IDIOT” to describe the perverted liar-in-chief of the most powerful empire on earth, the time for praising the great Latin American President has come.

Hugo Chavez holds in contempt the excessive desire for private wealth, the criminal culture of corruption, and unregulated materialism that grips the vast majority of human beings in hopeless poverty.  No one has the right to own in excess, he believes.  Opulence in a world so full of poverty is obscene, degenerate, and criminal, no matter how much fat cats protest about having earned their billions legally, even if immorally.  Legality is not equivalent to honesty. 

Understanding this about Chavez and watching Fellini films like “La Strada,” “Nights of Cabiria,” and “La Dolce Vita,” it becomes easy to see that both Fellini and Chavez are clearly aware of the soulless cruelty and brutal dishonesty of unregulated capitalist-corporate systems that are devouring the earth before our very eyes.

With their great hearts, Fellini and Chavez saw that it is the goodness of simple people — working very hard just to have enough to feed their own families — that keeps the world from collapsing into utter chaos.  Both saw the limit of tolerance getting very close and the failure of social compassion.

The vision that makes millions of hearts beat with great hope is Hugo Chavez’s mission for a world without oppression and poverty.  Chavez is one of the few statesmen with an understanding of history and realism about the future.  Demonic materialists are afraid that he may wake up the sleeping masses to see the nakedness of their blood-soaked oppressors.  Their mad hatred of Chavez is like the screeching reaction of a hyena caught by a sudden spotlight in the act of trying to devour a sleeping child.  The innocent child represents the TV-hypnotized millions, watching meaningless crap that prevents them from noticing that the hyenas are devouring their country. Chavez understands all this.

His first step toward that different world is the revival of Simon Bolivar’s dream of a united Latin America with democratic, social, and economic justice for its people.  The union of a truly democratic Latin America will establish a shining example that can expand social progress on a global scale and spread the ideas of a sustainable way of life based on nurturing, responsibility and equity rather than hoarding and oppression by a few.

Hugo Chavez also understands the need of major united efforts to spread this new human conscience, to restore the real ideal of active love of one’s neighbor.  He wants to develop a free international media and protect the independence of electronic networks, so that the world’s youth can bypass and overwhelm the propaganda spin machines of the Evil Empire.  Oppressed people everywhere — in Europe, Asia, North American, etc. — will want to participate and contribute to this global revolution.  A different world dream is being born right now, and Chavez is helping to deliver the shining new infant.  Once the North unites with the South as one soul dedicated to life, environment, and the future of all our children, the world will be safe at last.

During the 2005 World Social Forumat GigantinhoStadium in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Hugo Chavez was enthusiastically introduced by Ignacio Ramonet, a famous Spanish writer and journalist. This was Chavez’ response:

Ignacio Ramonet, in his introduction, mentioned that I am a new kind of leader. I accept this, especially coming from a bright mind such as Ignacio’s, but many old leaders inspire me.

Some very old like, for example, Jesus Christ, one of the greatest revolutionaries, anti-imperialists fighters in the history of the world, the true Christ, the Redeemer of the Poor.

Simon Bolivar, a man that crisscrossed these lands, filling people with hope, and helping liberate them.

Or that Argentine doctor, who crisscrossed our continent on a motorcycle, arriving in Central America to witness the gringo invasion of Guatemala in 1955, one of the many abuses that North American Imperialism perpetrated on this continent.

Or that old fellow with a beard, Fidel Castro, Abreu Lima, Artigas, San Martin, O’Higgins, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Sandino, Morazan, Tupac Amaru, and all those old leaders one draws inspiration from.

Old leaders, I understand them, because they were true and they have all returned.

Today we are millions.

One of these old fellows, when he was about to be killed, shouted: ‘I die today, but some day I’ll return and I’ll be millions.’

Atahualpa has returned and he is millions.  Tupac Amaru has returned and he is millions.  Bolivar has returned and he is millions.  Sucre, Zapata, and here we are.  They have returned and are with us.  In this crowded Gigantinho Stadium.

Hugo Chavez is today’s greatest revolutionary leader.  All over the world, the spirit of past leaders is returning in the hearts of new generations.  Benjamin Franklin is back.  Crazy Horse has returned.  Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Henry Thoreau, JFK.  They are millions.  Let oppressors beware.

And let us all be aware that there never was true spiritual awareness without active love for our brothers and sisters. Let oppressors learn.  That is what Jesus taught.  That is what Gandhi and Martin Luther King confirmed. 

It is when Hugo Chavez says that Bolivarian Democratic Socialism is “love of the people” that the President of Venezuela proves himself to be a true Christian and a liberator.  He is putting all fake Christians to shame, those fat, narrow-minded televangelists that call for war and foam at the mouth, asking for the assassinations of the great Bolivarian leader from the South.  Their days of defrauding innocents are over for scum like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, departed Jerry Falwell, and all the other racists in the lower states.  So it also goes for those false Catholics who opposed liberation theology, practice child abuse, and who supported the Mussolinis, Pinochets, and Somosas of the world.

Hugo Chavez is today’s man of destiny that will lead the world to a re-evaluation and renewal of the social and international order: from the rebirth of the UN as a truly democratic world forum, to new fair treaties that will lift poor nations into the modern era with equal standing in the global family of independent and cooperative societies.

When Chavez stood before twenty-nine heads of state of the Non-Aligned Countries gathered in Caracas in May 2004, he galvanized those who heard him.  He spoke for the “Conscience of the South” and showed globalization to be a conniving manipulation to force acceptance of the Bushist New World Order imposed by the rich to utterly enslave oppressed nations by forcing them to remain low cost producers of wealth and recipients of leftovers and scraps for their own people.

At that meeting, Hugo Chavez reiterated the staggering fact that only 15% of people living in the North are reaping the benefits of globalization. He showed how globalization has itself brought dependency and poverty, even though the world’s tremendous scientific-technical advances have the capacity to generate wealth and wellbeing for all humanity. 

The real face of the imperialist New World Order can be seen especially in the South, where 790 million are starving, 800 million are illiterate, 654 million will not live past 40 years of age.  This is the harsh face of the new economic order imposed by plutocrats.  Every year the South sees the death of over 11 million helpless boys and girls below 5 years of age.  Children die at the appalling rate of over 30 thousand every day: 21 every minute!

But numbers are not enough and Chavez knows this.  He wants the media to show images of this dreadful reality so the millions in rich countries will stop sticking their heads in the sand.  Chavez is not perfect, but he is a fighter for the downtrodden and represents hope for a better life for millions. 

The fact that rich exploiters in Venezuela and the U.S. calumny Chavez is proof that Hugo is not a member of their dark mob of highway robbers, even though he controls 20% more oil reserves than the Saudi Royal despots.  Controlled U.S. media is never permitted to attacks Big Oil club members, especially the Saudis.  Chavez is the outsider, a dangerous do-gooder, a rebel Bush & Cronies failed to kill in the 2002 U.S.-financed fascist coup against him.

Fellini would have loved Chavez.  Fellini showed us how to observe the world carefully as a composition of events in light and colors, and how to listen to the sounds and voices of life.  He saw humanity oppressed by the stupidity of the rich and viewed the rich as lost souls in their selfish, shallow, and insensitive excesses.  He saw ignorance cultivated by decadent religions, and cults as a tool of oppression that had always helped power-holders.

President Hugo Chavez, like Fellini, protested against Catholic political meddling and showed his understanding of the separation of politics and religion.  On May 13, 2007, while in Brazil, Benedict XVI made two outrageous statements: “Christianity was not imposed by a foreign culture” and “Christ was the Savior [America’s natives] silently yearned for.”  He further demeaned the rebirth of pre-Columbian beliefs as “a step backward.”  These pontifications sparked protests from native peoples everywhere, including México. 

Natives in Ecuador were shocked that Benedict XVI seemed ignorant of the Spanish-Catholic history of brutality.  The Confederation of Indigenous Nations responded: “Surely, the Pope does know that representatives of the Catholic Church of those times, with honorable exceptions, were accomplices, deceivers, and beneficiaries of one of the most horrific genocides in all human history.”

Too honest to let this pass — even if problematic for a leader of a Catholic nation — Venezuela’s Chavez asked the Pope publicly:

How could you say that they came to evangelize…when they came with arquebuses (firearms) to evangelize?  With no sort of imposition?…La Conquista was something far worse than the Holocaust in the Second World War and no one can deny it.  Not even your Holiness can deny the Holocaust of the natives of our land.  Christ arrived much later to America; he did not arrive with (Christopher) Columbus: that was the arrival of the anti-Christ…As a head of state, I beg your holiness to apologize to the peoples of our Americas. I believe it is the right thing to do.

Chavez stands for the truth of Christ’s teachings, not the politics of a Vatican that has almost always helped oppressors, whether with crowns or banks.  Organized religions all over the world today, as much as they did in the past, are all still fleecing multitudes and peddling fear and promises of salvation at discount prices.  Chavez is no fool.  No religionist deception will intimidate him, just as Catholic power did not intimidate Fellini working in the heart of Catholic Rome.

Fellini’s answer to the lunacy of the world is to participate in the joy of living with humor, compassion, and, above all, Love, even as we strongly oppose evil.

Fellini and Chavez are universal comrades, marching at the head of millions of great heroes of the past and are among the ranks of the founders of a new and different world that is in the process of being born.

For more information, contact Aldo Vidali at [email protected]

View “One American” at http://www.communication-evolution.org/the-film