2006.09.21 Hugo Chavez

This was published at 911blogger.com on Sept. 21, 2006.

On his address to the UN, Sept. 20, 2006. Also here and here. The book Chavez refers to in his speech is Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

Your words bring solace to a damaged nation

not yours, but mine, a limping giant

wounded in its soul by its very leaders,

the men you call imperialists and devils, assassins, torturers.

We know this too. But we need to hear it from you

because we know you are our friend.

You call us brothers, and we believe you.

You remind us of the well-documented crimes of the CIA

against your country and many others, including our own.

You know Bushco, the devil, was behind 9/11

and all that has followed, and you aren't afraid to say so.

Chomsky doesn't go that far, but David Griffin does

and he agrees with you about the devil.

So do we. We the people

sinking into fascism like the Germans yesterday,

having learned nothing at all from history,

struck deaf, dumb and blind not by 9/11

but by television and the New York Times

who sold out to the devil years ago.

Now you come, Hugo Chavez, saying what the Times

will not print, but our hearts burn to say

before the UN General Assembly.

How can we thank you but in small ways, like this

in the hope that someday small voices will rise into a chorus

as they have in your country, and in Bolivia

and we one day will have real elections again

and elect people like you who will tell the truth

and do what we want them to do

instead of what they want, which is to enslave us,

kill us, impoverish and exploit us, and worst of all,

do all of this without us knowing, thinking we are free,

the "greatest country in the world."

Has there ever been a more pitiable state in all of history?

"And they thought they were free!"

will be our epitaph, signed by the Vice-President of Sneers,

unless we rise, hermano, and smile your smile of brotherhood

and justice. Te saludo, Hugo, amigo americano.