US of Amnesia - Chavez or Bush –Choose:
Lobbying, environmental, social justice and other organizing in the US of Amnesia will never work, never change anything soon and causes more problems than it solves. The Andes have a lot to teach us and a world to win - a dollar a year from every person in the USA could make the difference.
_____ A CALL to Convene:
The FIRST INTERNACIONAL for Post-Capitalist Participatory Democracy and Revolution; Convention proposed for Caracas mid-summer of 2005. (1)________________________________________________________






Shout: La revolución p’alante, p’alante y al que no le guste que se
joda y que se aguante… The revolution forward, forward, & those who do not like it, will have to stand it”

Hugo Chavez expressed his desire for a New Internacional in Madrid:
“Why can’t we form a democratic and revolutionary international? Unite all the oppressed peoples, the workers, the indigenous peoples ...the working class must be the vanguard of the revolution (...) It should not only concern itself with immediate or wage demands, which are necessary and must be fought for, but it must also look beyond, to the transformation of society as a whole”

“The working class has no borders” (2)
We presume that the documents presented by MER at www.mer130.tripod.com and at www. real-left.tripod.com are the basis of the radical tendency in this movement.
We want to hear all voices and look
forward to improving our program. (3)
Thank you - Read and Rock on!
One day, in the arid region of northeastern Brazil, one of the most famine-stricken parts of the world, I met a bishop going into his house; he was shaking. "Bishop, what's the matter?" I asked. He replied that he had just seen a terrible sight: in front of the cathedral was a woman with three small children and a baby clinging to her neck. He saw that they were fainting from hunger. The baby seemed to be dead. He said: "Give the baby some milk, woman!" "I can't, my lord," she answered. The bishop went on insisting that she should, and she that she could not. Finally, because of his insistence, she opened her blouse. Her breast was bleeding; the baby sucked violently at it. And sucked blood. The mother who had given it life was feeding it, like the pelican, with her own blood, her own life. The bishop knelt down in front of the woman, placed his hand on the baby's head, and there and then vowed that as long as such hunger existed, he would feed at least one hungry child each day. (4)-- From Introducing Liberation Theology ; www.landreform.org/reading0.htm

The 5-Part Series: Lessons Learned: From The Failure of Politics and Vision in North America To the Steady Victories of the Social Movements in South America, by Mundo de Escuelas Revolucionarias (MER)
Part I: U.S.A. George W Bush’s Eternal Triumph or
The Andes to
the Rescue of the World
Jasonmartin7@
lycos.com
“American imperial-ism has been in the works ever since Franklin Roosevelt encountered Winston Churchill a long time ago. Roosevelt concluded that he didn’t like the British Empire but that the world needed something like it so long as we held the reins... Nothing was more convenient for us than Fidel Castro. Instead of saying we were supporting the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, we could contend that we were protecting these poor Guatemalans from the menace of Soviet influence and the influence of Fidel Castro. The Reagan administration gave Central America its worst decade since the Spanish conquest. It’s a travesty what we did to places like El Salvador and Guatemala. And it worries me today that John Negroponte has been appointed ambassador to Iraq. He was the ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, when Honduras was the largest single CIA station on earth, carrying out counter-revolutionary attacks against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He should be answering charges of war crimes carried out by the Reagan administration.” (5)-- Chalmers Johnson;
POINTS FOR REVOLUTIONARY POLICY FORMATION (Decision-Time)
1. National and global social movements need to embrace a practical and focused goal of accumulating power in order to takeover governments. Conventional politics and left-thinking in the USA are dead.
2. The only effective means of altering the balance of power in the US (and thus the world) are armed struggle; relocating activists and supporters of change to states in the USA where they can seize power; or through massive financial aid to the revolutions in the Andes. Protests, lobbying and voting are stupid. They actually aid the power elite who want the appearance of democracy and opposition – as long as it can accomplish nothing. (6)
3. The leaders of USA environmental and justice groups are barriers to change. The debate is whether to try new strategies or fall back on style and simply modify the current moderate plan of merging left issues together in a coalition with moderate democrats – a strategy where victory becomes as meaningless as defeat!
4. The USA is an empire of corporate, trade and, military alliances. Only through extending our conceptions of politics – which is another word for Power – extending it beyond the imaginary borders of nations can we create a better world.(7)
5.James Petras has a criteria for judging anti-imperialist governments:
"Do they pay the foreign debt to US and European banks; do they respect the privatization of strategic industries; do they promote new privatizations; do they keep their markets open to overseas exporters; do they support the dollar against the euro by holding their reserves in dollars; do they pass regressive labor, pension and minimum wage legislation; do they abide by IMF agreements and impose austerity programs and regressive tax laws?" Add to this list, bans on GMOs. Why let Monsanto or Dow or any non-local company control your seed or farm production? Chavez banned GMOs – Lula legalized them. Series Part I: real-left.tripod.com/index.blog

A Global War is on, and the only subjects worth studying; organizing or executing are those that can change the whole system in a short time. The target is always to stop the USA: Get USA military-espionage programs and USA-backed death squads out of all countries; and create an appealing and diverse counter-power to USA hegemony. (9)

A Hierarchy of Socio-Political Evolution:
How to Change the World: Applied Resistance by Movements & States
I. Stop the USA Economic Cancer and Imperialist Aggression
a. Build Revolutionary Coalitions in Latin America: First in the Andes where Revolutions are Ripe and the Indigenous Populations are the Highest.
b. Raise Billions of Dollars to Help these Groups and Anyone Fighting Capitalism in the Andes (10)
II. Force the USA – EU – OECD to Consume Less and to Pollute Much Less.
a. Reduce USA Corporate Profits Through Trade Barriers (Tariffs and Quotas), Embargos, Debt Erasures, Boycotts and the Expropriation of USA Corporate Holdings. Expel Everything and Everyone Connected to the USA and Seize Their Stolen Possessions. (11)
b. Make the USA-EU Empires Pay Higher Oil Prices With Oil Embargos or by Utilizing Most of the Oil Within the South. Charge the USA Surcharges for Oil Purchases (& other products) and Require Them to Use Ships and Refineries in the South.
III. Defend and Build up the Revolutions in the South
a. Prepare Strategies to Resist USA Imperialist Attacks. The Best Defense is a Strong People with a Clear Ideology, Decentralized Economy and Decentralized Mobile Armed Forces. (12)
IV. Build a Personal and Social Consciousness of the Importance of the Environment to Self Reliance, Solidarity and National Defense
a. Solidarity Economics: A Solidaristic Decentralized Cooperative and Local-Oriented Economy.
b. Education (Latin America) for Solidarity and Eco-protection/ Sustainability. (13)
V. Issues and Variables: Time. a. Does anyone think that time is an important factor?
b. How do we factor the uncertainty of the timeframe concerning the issues of global warming’s peak or the next wave of US invasions into our models and plans for resistance? (14)

USA activist like to tout: Peace, Justice
and Environmental Sustainability
So – First comes the war against capitalism (which is mostly a mental war of rejecting the brainwashing they feed us) and then the establishment of sustainable-oriented governments in the Andes and then in all of Latin America. Then there will come the wars against US aggression and Yankee invasions. Then we will be on the road to peace.
Then we do years of education and experiments in new theories of economic development, then we will be on the road to justice.
Then if there is an environment left we try to protect and restore it. Then we might be approaching the road to sustainable development. (15)
To move this hierarchy of needs and evolution along people in the USA-EU can send money, many skilled specialists and trades people to the revolutions in the Andes.
Instead of growing frustrated with the inevitable defeats in the USA (failure to change anything) and the reality that protests and lobbying can actually encourage the right wing or the ignorant voters to fight change more, activists can earn strategic victories by aiding, visiting and organizing around the revolutions in the Andes. These People to People – or "Pueblo a People" campaigns can be positive and real.
Move beyond political stalemate to make a real difference. Forget politics as you knew it. Do the politics of building resistance. Forget lobbying and all environmental or social justice organizing in the USA. That won't work – never change anything soon. The Andes have a lot to teach us and a world to win - a dollar a year from every person in the USA could make the difference.
Take the power where you can find it!

To build a counter-power to the imperialist USA, activist groups need to reach beyond national boundaries to build strong alliances in Latin America with indigenous people (40 to 80 million people), workers in the Andes (30 to 40 million people), African descendants (100,000,000 to 120,000,000 people), and to finance aid programs with Venezuelan and Andean revolutionary groups. Solidarity with these groups and the 200 million Latin American people trapped in neoliberal (USA-imposed) poverty can yield dividends abroad and within the USA. (16)

A Great Debate rages among the Enviro and Narrow Left elite over the meaning of activism in the USA-EU. The Death of Environmentalism and how to enhance the charade of fighting global warming is the agenda. Three to five billion dollars in donations and the world hang in the balance. The ecological time bombs of trade (invasive species) and global warming are ticking away. The US left and the US environmental movement have failed and should die so something better can take their place. The real issue of what a post-global warming world means to the 3 billion poor of the planet must become the focus of all activism and the goal of strategy.

Without a rapid decline in consumption in the rich countries all environmental issues are hopeless and the chances of meaningful social change are non-existent. Resource wars and wars of imperialism will be the only issues left. These are the challenges and time limits that we face. (17)


KEY POINTS

1. US Enviros have killed the environmental movement and the Narrow Left strategies of single issue campaigning have failed.

2. There is no way to avoid the catastrophe of global warming because the capitalist model of consumption growth and rampant pollution to reduce costs combines with US greed to guarantee massive increases in greenhouse gases.

3. To survive in this post-global warming future of brutal US imperialist wars, the few remaining moral people in the US and Europe should fund revolutions in the Andes to create an alternative model and a counter to US hegemony.

4. There are billions of dollars in potential funding up for grabs in the US and Europe. The deceptions and failures of the Narrow left and the Enviros has created a vacuum where people are looking for something positive to invest in.

5. There is a process or hierarchy of resistance and movement building that can guide our efforts to stop imperialism and protect the environment. The basis of this hierarchy is that we must be honest and probing about our goals (near term and long run); about the strategies that could achieve them; and deeply open to debate and to clearer thinking than in the past. The Real Left needs to make sense - AND be understandable, with real solutions to all of the linked problems.

Two billion ounces of silver were extracted from Potosi’s Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) during the Spanish colonial era. Cerro Rico silver paved the streets, fuelled the European Renaissance and helped fund the Invincible Armada, the Spanish fleet that sailed against Elizabethan England in 1588. In 1572, Spanish Viceroy Francisco de Toledo created a system of forced labour called la mita. Every 7 years, for a period of four months, all males between 18 and 50 were ordered to work in the mines. They were paid a pittance and rarely saw the light of day. Eighty per cent of the male population of the 16 provinces of the viceroyalty of Peru died in these conditions. “Every peso coin minted in Potosi has cost the life of 10 Indians who have died in the depths of the mines,” wrote Fray Antonio de la Calancha.
Today Potosi is dying. “When a mine closes, all that’s left is a ghost town,” says mayor, Rene Joaquino a vocal admirer of Che Guevara.

HUGO CHAVEZ:
"Imperialism not invincible!
Look at Vietnam, Iraq and Cuba resisting, and now look at Venezuela… Some people say that we cannot say nor do anything that can irritate those in Washington. I offer you the words of Argentine independence hero José de San Martin:
‘Let's be free without caring what anyone else says.’”
– Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela
–
If Alexander Cockburn Tariq Ali, Jeffery St. Claire, Hugo Chavez, the MST in Brazil and Bolivia, Felipe Quispe, James Petras, Walden Bello, Vandana Shiva, Arhundati Roy, Ken Livingston, Ward Churchill, the German Greens/ EU Nordic/Left Blocs, the Uruguayan Leftists, the Chilean Communist Party, Ruben Zamora, the Cubans, radical ecologists, other activists and professors would come forward with all of their power to support a clear plan for a new type of participatory socialist – or solidaristic - economy then many people, activists and movements would come together from around the world to promote this vision. The deadlock of US-world politics would be broken and with some luck and hard work the South would begin to construct the vibrant models that are possible there. (Who else could help??)(19)

Who Needs Ends When We've Got Such Bitchin' Means?
clamormagazine.typepad.com/everydayrevolution/2005/02/who_needs_ends_.html