Rise
Up Against the Empire
By Hugo Chavez
21 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Representatives
of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of
all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have
not read this book, to read it.
Noam Chomsky, one of the
most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and
this is one of his most recent books, 'Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist
Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front
of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand
what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and
what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.
The hegemonic pretensions
of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the
human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal
to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat,
which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading
from this book, but, for the sake of time," [flips through the
pages, which are numerous] "I will just leave it as a recommendation.
It reads easily, it is a
very good book, I'm sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it.
It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that
the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters
in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.
The devil is right at home.
The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.
"And the devil came
here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here." [crosses
himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen,
from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman
to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the
world. Truly. As the owner of the world.
I think we could call a psychiatrist
to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United
States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums,
to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and
pillage of the peoples of the world.
An Alfred Hitchcock movie
could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The
Devil's Recipe."
As Chomsky says here, clearly
and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate
its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot
allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.
The world parent's statement
-- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need
they have to control everything.
They say they want to impose
a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false
democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's
imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.
What a strange democracy.
Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.
What type of democracy do
you impose with marines and bombs?
The president of the United
States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting,
"Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape
from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."
Wherever he looks, he sees
extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says,
oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia,
looks like an extremist to him.
The imperialists see extremists
everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is
waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.
I have the feeling, dear
world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as
a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are
rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality,
for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.
Yes, you can call us extremists,
but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.
The president then -- and
this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to
the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants
peace."
That's true. If we walk in
the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San
Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals,
the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does
it want peace? They'll say yes.
But the government doesn't
want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace.
It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony
through war.
It wants peace. But what's
happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening?
What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the
world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela,
against Iran?
He spoke to the people of
Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities
were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity
to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?
This is crossfire? He's thinking
of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would
be caught in the crossfire.
This is imperialist, fascist,
assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine
and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, "We're suffering
because we see homes destroyed.'
The president of the United
States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He
came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning
I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people
of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed
all these peoples directly.
And you can wonder, just
as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the
world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given
the floor? What would they have to say?
And I think I have some inkling
of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would
say, "Yankee imperialist, go home." I think that is what those
people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could
speak with one voice to the American imperialists.
And that is why, Madam President,
my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall
as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something
that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.
I don't think anybody in
this room could defend the system. Let's accept -- let's be honest.
The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.
Oh, yes, it's good to bring
us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare
all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel's
yesterday, or President Mullah's . Yes, it's good for that.
And there are a lot of speeches,
and we've heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance,
and the president of Chile.
But we, the assembly, have
been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power
to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that
is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that
we re-establish the United Nations.
Last year, Madam, we made
four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have
to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our
representatives, and we have to discuss it.
The first is expansion, and
Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council,
both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing
countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That's
step one.
Second, effective methods
to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.
Point three, the immediate
suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the
anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of
the Security Council.
Let me give you a recent
example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis,
with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we
stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.
Fourthly, we have to strengthen,
as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general
of the United Nations.
Yesterday, the secretary
general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized
that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated;
hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened.
That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations
system and American hegemonistic pretensions.
Madam, Venezuela a few years
ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing
the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our
voice, our thinking.
Our voice is an independent
voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation
of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression
of hegemonistic forces on the planet.
This is how Venezuela has
presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the
Security Council.
Let's see. Well, there's
been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try
and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security
Council.
The imperium is afraid of
truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but
they are the extremists.
And I would like to thank
all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela,
even though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need to announce
things.
But since the imperium has
attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries.
And their support strengthens us.
Mercosur, as a bloc, has
expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil,
Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.
And many other Latin American
countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela.
The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I
am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean
brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its
support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many
others.
I thank you all warmly on
behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth,
because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing
not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all
the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.
Over and above all of this,
Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet
would have said "helplessly optimistic," because over and
above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war
and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is
dawning.
As Silvio Rodriguez says,
the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking.
There are young people who think differently. And this has already been
seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of
history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about
Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world.
It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes
in it now?
What we now have to do is
define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can
see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to
emphasize that optimistic vision.
We have to strengthen ourselves,
our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better
world.
Venezuela joins that struggle,
and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed
and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup
attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.
President Michelle Bachelet
reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the
former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.
And I would just add one
thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event
where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were
CIA killers, terrorists.
And we must recall in this
room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty
years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on
the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.
And where is the biggest
terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing
up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA
and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives
here in this country, protected by the government.
And he was convicted. He
has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards.
It protects terrorism when it wants to.
And this is to say that Venezuela
is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one
of the people who are fighting for peace.
Luis Posada Carriles is the
name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously
corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under
protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated
people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill
me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets
and the army was too, and so I'm here today.
But these people who led
that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government.
And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of
having a completely cynical discourse.
We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we
were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.
And there you see another
era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted
a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don't worry, I'm
not going to read it.
But you have a whole set
of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent
matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the
south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group
of the nonaligned with new momentum.
And if there is anything
I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters,
it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned
Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent
further advances of imperialism.
And as you know, Fidel Castro
is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we
can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.
Unfortunately they thought,
"Oh, Fidel was going to die." But they're going to be disappointed
because he didn't. And he's not only alive, he's back in his green fatigues,
and he's now presiding the nonaligned.
So, my dear colleagues, Madam
President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south.
We are men and women of the south.
With this document, with
these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closing my file. I'm taking
the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it very warmly
and very humbly to all of you.
We want ideas to save our
planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully
in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will
see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world
of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations,
but a renewed United Nations.
And maybe we have to change
location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe
a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.
You know that my personal
doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left
in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive
and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse
of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God
is with us and I embrace you all.
May God bless us all. Good
day to you.