11/30/07 "ICH" -- -- Chavez spoke to a huge crowd in Caracas on Friday. It was by a significant amount the hardest speech I've ever heard from him, mostly to the effect of "Go ahead, make my day." (No, I'm not in Venezuela. I listened to it -- most of it at any rate -- at work, where we have access to the satellite signals of the government VTV and the opposition Globo channel).
Chavez has ordered the military to protect the oilfields and other installations and warned that if there is any sabotage, any US-inspired disturbances Sunday night, oil shipments to the U.S. will be cut off immediately. He singled out the bourgeois media and said that any attempt to violate the law --which forbids publishing polls in the week before the election and (alleged) election results before polls close-- will lead to their immediate shutdown. He warned international broadcasters --and CNN by name, and repeatedly-- that this or any other sort of shenanigans will be met with the expulsion of their staff from the country.
He's also expressed very clearly the line he has taken especially since coming back from abroad, that this referendum is an up-and-down, yes-or-no vote on the revolution and his presidency. I'm sure the ultralefts will go, "Aha! Bonapartist plebiscite!" But sometimes you've just got to call things by their right name. That is what the fight is about -- not whether the subordinate clause in article 53 is infelicitously worded.
And he made very clear what being with the revolution means -- it means going against the oligarchs, against Uribe, against the American imperialists, against the King of Spain, against the European imperialists, and being in solidarity with progressive and revolutionary forces throughout the world in general and with Fidel in particular.
He read and commented on Fidel's latest column, which Walter I'm sure has already forwarded to the list.
The rally was at the same place where the opposition held its event yesterday, which CNN described as having been "hundreds of thousands." Without having been there and knowing the area, it is hard to judge, but VTV had no problem yesterday finding areas of this avenue with very few people, even though the main area of the rally was full for what looked like several blocks. VTV today made a point of scanning from what seemed to be the same vantage point to show there were people much further back, and Chavez highlighted it also. I did not see the opposition channel I have access to try to show that the crowd thinned out after a few blocks; but I wasn't monitoring them all the time.
Since Chavez came back from abroad and mounted what's been in essence a ferocious counter-offensive against the opposition, it seems to have wilted a fair deal. An adventurist attempt to disrupt major traffic arteries a couple of days ago (they were going to leaflet motorists was the claim ...) was dispersed with vigor, dispatch, and a good deal of tear gas. Some of the students came with their own tear gas masks and tried to provoke an escalation by pelting the police with rocks, but the police responded only with more tear gas. "Strangely," an opposition TV mobile unit just "happened" to be nearby and filmed the events, but it did not appear to have evoked the hoped-for outrage when it was broadcast, perhaps because any idiot could see it was the opposition forces that provoked the incident and tried to escalate it (unsuccessfully).
So now it is a question of waiting for the next right wing provocation. Chavez has promised a no-holds-barred response and seemed to go way out of his way to make sure everyone understood there was no wiggle room, he was consciously painting himself into a corner. The deployment of army and other military units to guard oil fields and other strategic installations has the added advantage of making a coup by some disloyal officers much harder to carry out.
But the opposition has also painted itself into a corner. The impression I get is that they've depicted this as the final, now or never, effort to turn back the revolution, and it won't be easy to get their hotheads to change course. Although Chavez and his supporters tend to present this all as a conscious, coordinated plot, the truth is that there is a law of social struggles that applies here to the opposition especially: when you set controlled forces into motion, you also set uncontrolled forces into motion.
Havana, Nov 30 (Prensa Latina) Cuban President Fidel Castro stated that the assassination of Venezuela's leader or a civil war in that country would blow up the globalized world economy, due to its huge reserves of hydrocarbons.
In his Friday's article entitled "A People Under Fire," the Cuban Revolution leader says that such circumstances are without precedent in the history of mankind.
"On Chavez' recent visit last November 21, I seriously discussed with him the risks of assassination as he is constantly out in the open in convertible vehicles," the statesman stresses.
"I said this because of my experience as a combatant trained in the use of an automatic weapon and a telescopic sight. Likewise, after the triumph, I became the target of assassination plots directly or indirectly ordered by almost every United States administration since 1959," President Fidel Castro states.
Prensa Latina issues below reflections by the Cuban president:
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REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF:
A PEOPLE UNDER FIRE
Venezuela, whose people are heirs to Bolivar's ideas which transcend his era, is today facing a world tyranny a thousand times more powerful than that of Spain's colonial strength added to that of the recently born United States which, through Monroe, proclaimed their right to the natural wealth of the continent and to the sweat of its people.
Marti denounced the brutal system and called it a monster, in whose entrails he had lived. His internationalist spirit shone as never before when, in a letter left unfinished due to his death in combat, he publicly revealed the objective of his restless struggle: "…I am now every day risking my life for my country, and for my duty -since I understand it and have the courage to do it- to timely prevent, with the independence of Cuba, that the United States expand over the Antilles and that they fall, with this additional force, over our lands in America…"
It was not in vain that he stated in plain verse: "With the poor of this earth, my fate I wish to cast". Later, he proclaimed categorically: "Humanity is homeland". The Apostle of our independence wrote one day: "Let Venezuela call on me to serve her: I am her son".
The most sophisticated media developed by technology, employed to kill human beings and to subjugate or exterminate peoples; the massive sowing of conditioned reflexes of the mind; consumerism and all available resources; these are being used today against the Venezuelans, with the intent of ripping the ideas of Bolivar and Marti to shreds.
The empire has created conditions conducive to violence and internecine conflicts. On Chavez's recent visit last November 21, I seriously discussed with him the risks of assassination as he is constantly out in the open in convertible vehicles. I said this because of my experience as a combatant trained in the use of an automatic weapon and a telescopic sight. Likewise, after the triumph, I became the target of assassination plots directly or indirectly ordered by almost every United States administration since 1959.
The irresponsible government of the empire does not stop for a minute to think that the assassination of Venezuela's leader or a civil war in that country would blow up the globalized world economy, due to its huge reserves of hydrocarbons. Such circumstances are without precedent in the history of mankind.
Cuba developed close ties with the Bolivarian government of Venezuela during the hardest days resulting from the demise of the USSR and the tightening of the United States economic blockade. The exchange of goods and services grew from practically zero level to more than 7 billion dollars annually, with great economic and social benefits for both our peoples. Today that is where we receive the fundamental supplies of fuel needed for our country's consumption, something that would be very difficult to obtain from other sources due to the shortage of light crude oil, the insufficient refining capacity, the United States' power and the wars its has unleashed to seize the world oil and gas reserves.
Add to the high energy prices, the prices of foods destined by imperial policy to be transformed into fuel for the gas-guzzling cars of the United States and other industrial nations.
A victory of the Yes vote on December 2 would not be enough. The weeks and months following that date may very well prove to be extremely tough for many countries, Cuba for one; although before that the empire's adventures could lead the planet into an atomic war, as their own leaders have confessed.
Our compatriots can rest assured that I have had time to think and to meditate at length on these problems.
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