Anyone who reads this should immediately cease all other activity to listen to today's Democracy Now broadcast on radio or webcast (Pacifica).
Amy Goodman interviews the US lawyer of a US citizen who has been SENTENCED TO DEATH by an Iraqi judge after a totally illegal intervention by US military officers alleging to speak for the Romanian government. I will not go into details, it's crazier than fiction, but urge all readers to do whatever they can to prevent the US government from handing this person over to the Iraqis to be shot.
Also on this program, an interview with the writer Tariq Ali about his book "Pirates of the Carribean", about the Venezuelan revolution.
And also, a clip from the documentary "The Revolution will not be televised" about the failed coup against Chavez, shot by two Irishmen inside the presidential palace while the coup was being reversed. Stunnning.
This brings me to a point I've been wanting to make for some time: Tariq Ali described the reaction of the UN General Assembly to Chavez' speech which of course was widely seen all over the world if not in the US, how the delegates applauded him and even Arab delegates told him afterwards that he was saying what they could no longer say about the U.S.
Tariq Ali described the Venezuelan people's reaction when the coup against Chavez was defeated, saying: "The people went wild". He said it in admiration, but unfortunately, it's precisely the image of "the people going wild" that has prevented many liberals from realizing the sophistication of today's "people". Underestimating the knolwedge, organization and determination of "the people" all over the world leads American politicians to cling to yesterday's solutions.
A prediction: the United States will undergo radical change as a result of the combined awareness of the poor (Katrina), the immigrant community, and veterans of the horrific Middle East wars, and many will continue to wonder how it could happen here.
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