Christmas letter to Maggie and all “Indignados”

Dear Maggie;

Let me answer publicly your heart touching email and I profit from this opportunity to address it to millions of outraged all over this world. As a matter of fact, we know each other since you were born and your daddy was, and still is, my fellow student and one of my best friends. I’m sure he has told you about many episodes we lived together; specially the night we met the first time that I cheerfully remember. How could I possible forget that September night, Jewish New Year Eve, when he and his Israeli companion Tzvi Rosenberg arrived in our room to be shared and their surprise when I wished them Happy New Year in Hebrew? But, more surprisingly to discover I was not Jewish but Venezuelan Catholic. Dearest Maggie, that was the first step towards an incredible friendship between an Orthodox conservative Jewish and a South American revolutionary. Along the following months we talked and talked, deeply knew each other and exchanged information and the best of all was that stereotyped barriers, lies, mendacity and misinformation were demolished. By exchanging information we got along and still keep on going strong some many years later because we were able to overcome religious, social, racial, cultural, and many other slight artificially created human differences.  You are now possible wandering why I’m telling you about themes you know since long. I want to stress the importance of true information, a right you have been always denied by corporate media in the USA, and the rest of the world, who never tell you the real truth, a behavior obeying a strategy to keep your mind and intellect in submission. They don’t actually wash your brain; they inoculate it with a poisonous matter to make you think and accept whatever is convenient for their interests.

They create the so called “induced desires” or “induced needs” to push you into buying what the also so called “consumption society” is interested at selling to foster corporate earnings. Actual elections of political candidates for important governmental positions are restricted to those who can pay for it, but also those with corporate support and actually sell you presidents, senators, representatives, governors and mayors exactly the same way they sell soap, automobiles or beauty creams, and recently to invest in hedge funds.

They induce fear for you to accept and support wars and interventions around the world so that gigantic corporations loot other nation’s natural resources they need at the lowest possible prices and, of course, obtain maximum profitability. The creation of artificial fear is twofold; you end up accepting and supporting their actions, but also accepting your own freedom and liberty reduction.

They keep you in absolute ignorance about other peoples and nations. The least you know about them, the easiest you accept their destruction.

Nowadays, the whole world is in total convulsion. Europe and North America are stirred by an ever growing mass of discontent people. But, why is it so? Of course, you perfectly know most of the reasons.

Don’t be surprised for telling you that South America is the exception in this unhappy and angry world. Why? Please let me explain a few facts.

South America and specially Venezuela is undergoing a special historical period where social needs are paramount but you know nothing about because your media hide what is going on or they just lie, be it by twisting the news or publishing half truths which is a way of lying. I pointed it out in previous writing, we are not indignados, and we are not outraged although we were several years ago. While Europe and the US are protesting and demanding social rights, such as salaries, pensions and other benefits reductions, we are having our benefits increased. While you scream for jobs, our unemployment is being drastically reduced; while your poverty rises to unforeseen heights, ours is on its way to disappear; while your educational system is having more and more limitations, ours is expanding and more and more boys and girls, even elders, obtain better education for free because education and health, as well as cultural, environmental, economical, housing, shelter, nourishing and others are constitutional human rights.

At last but not least, while lots of people are ousted from their homes due to the mortgage crisis, our poor people are moved into homes of their own, some of them enjoying governmental subsidies.  

I have told you only a few practical facts to illustrate some of present differences in either region; however, I must stress on the fact that the US and Europe are practically lost while looking for a way to end their crisis. They will not. Capitalism is definitely reaching its final stage and there is no possible way to stop its disappearance, sooner or latter. Capitalism used to find ways to cope with previous crisis while they used capital to produce material goods and not for speculating. According to scholars, capitals moving around the world to speculate are 75 times superior to the share used for real production. That is not just a bubble; it’s a time bomb due to explode with catastrophic consequences.

Turn around your sight towards a different experience. Our peoples and leaders have found ways to escape from the general overall crisis. You and others may wonder why and how. It’s easy to answer. Their first priority is precisely what yours have secularly neglected, PEOPLE.

When we were struggling and fighting against the most powerful enemy the world over, we were highly optimistic. We went to battle laughing and singing for we knew the final victory would be ours. The war is not over yet but we will overcome. So, my recommendation is to keep your spirit high, to be optimistic and confident the victory will be yours provided you do unite yourselves. Unity must be your motto.

Meanwhile, in spite of the fact you are suffering and fighting in the middle of a terrific battlefield, my best wishes are for a splendorous Christmas Season and I hope and pray for your best in 2012. These special greetings have nothing to do with creeds or religions, rejoicing is another human right, so, rejoice yourself whenever possible, and much better always.

SOCIALIST MOTHERLAND AND VICTORY  -  WE SHALL LIVE AND OVERCOME!