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26 Dec 2009

Aardvark

Aardvark
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Re-Launched

Aardvark Resurrected

After a couple of years of neglect I have decided to revisit my Blogger site and attempt to enliven it with adult humour, perhaps a little political satire and all the things that I hope will attract your interest. This is my other channel and although it will share some of the features of my 'Church of Aaran Aardvark' site on Multiply, it will differ in flavour and content.


My Blogger site is inended to be both more frivolous and also more intimate than my other site, so that is why I have made it age restricted in order to give scope for future developments of themes only suitable for an adult arena.

I hope this format hits the spot, it is an experiment in psychology, namely my own and a rough guide to part of the cognitive universe I inhabit.


The topics I intend raise here are ones that interest me, some of them fascinate me and it is a message in a bottle cast adrift on a sea of digital information and left to be picked up by any internet beachcomber who happens upon these messages and with whom I might communicate directly in the future.


You are welcome to join me on this uncertain journey through my mind and it would be excellent if you were also to share your thoughts on the thoughts images and reveries I post here. 


The format for this page is open, it encourages freedom of expression and the written word and the opportunities for discourse on any subject. Obviously I reserve the right to remove content from my own blog that I deem too offensive (or possibly illegal) to remain in this public forum for which I am solely responsible.


Other than that, I simply seek to provide a space where nothing is sacred and views can be expressed publically or privately about how we see things and what we want and expect from the bloggospher and the whole social network environment.



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2 Jan 2008

2007


Entry for 01 January 2008
Entry for 01 January 2008 magnify
Church of Aaran Aardvark Man of the Year Award 2007
goes to

Tariq Ali
The Black Dwarf Parable


As 2007 ends in a bloodbath in Pakistan resulting from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Church of Aaran Aardvark has chosen a man whose roots lie in that country.... to be our Man of the Year 2007. Tariq Ali British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator was born in Lahore in October 1943. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and later Chief Minister of the Punjab in 1937).

Tariq Ali has been there since I was a teenage reader of The Black Dwarf a political journal of the British left which he edited during it's short life from 1968-1970.
The title of this publication had a double meaning which was particularly appropriate to the late 1960s.

[Factoid One]
On the one hand a Black Dwarf refers to a hypothetical star, created when a white dwarf becomes sufficiently cool to no longer emit significant heat or light. Since the time required for a white dwarf to reach this state is calculated to be longer than the current age of the universe, 13.7 billion years, no black dwarfs are expected to exist in the Universe yet.
(Wikipedia:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf).

Tariq Ali who is said to be the inspiration for the Rolling Stones song 'Street Fighting Man' was to me as a young man 'sufficiently cool' in the late 1960s and as a matter of fact he remains so today in my view.

On the other hand the title also has a historical connotation that dates back to the original Black Dwarf, a radical and starical journal published in England by Thomas Wooler in response to the 'Gagging Acts' imposed by the British government in 1817.

Both publications are part of the cannon of our Church and below is a Wikipedia entry on the journal I avidly read in the Cellar Folk Club in Birmingham in the 60s, then the weekend hang out of the FAF (Front Against Fascism) in the fair city of my own birth.

The Black Dwarf ( Tariq Ali)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The first issue of Black Dwarf
The first issue of Black Dwarf 1968

The Black Dwarf was a political and cultural newspaper published between May 1968 and 1972 by a collective of socialists in the United Kingdom. It is often identified with Tariq Ali who edited and published this newspaper until 1970, when the editorial board split between Leninist and non-Leninist currents.

The Leninists, including Ali and other members of the International Marxist Group, went on to found the Red Mole.

The Black Dwarf published a special edition in autumn 1968 devoted entirely to the Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, in a translation first published by Ramparts in the United States. Included is an introduction by Fidel Castro. This edition appears to be in response to a version of the diaries being published by "some publishers in league with those who murdered Che".

The editorial and production group at this time included Ali, Clive Goodwin, Robin Fior, David Mercer, Mo Teitlebaum, Adrian Mitchell, Sheila Rowbotham, Sean Thompson, Roger Tyrrell and Fred Halliday.

[Factoid Two]
As it happens Thomas Wooler also had connections with Birmingham when in 1819 he became involved in the unlawful and seditious parliamentary election campaign of Sir Charles Wolseley.

Wooler and others were arrested on the charge of seditious conspiracy for playing their part in the democratic process.

I reproduce here a brief biographical note on Wooler in order to give some flavour of his Black Dwarf and it's ideological links to the later Black Dwarf associated with Tariq Ali and the political traditions implicit to the evolution of the Church of Aaran Aardvark. This extract is taken from Spartacus Schoolnet
at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRblack.html

Thomas Wooler
Thomas Jonathan Wooler was born in Yorkshire in 1786. Wooler moved to London where he was apprenticed as a printer. After working for the radical journal, the Reasoner, Wooler was appointed editor of the Statesman. Wooler took a particular interest in legal matters and in 1817 he wrote and published the pamphlet An Appeal to the Citizens of London against the Packing of Special Juries.

In January 1817 the British government persuaded Parliament to pass the Gagging Acts. Whereas William Cobbett responded to this act of government repression by leaving the country, Wooler was motivated to start publishing a new radical unstampedjournal, the Black Dwarf. When the journal first appeared in January 1817 it was an eight page newspaper but it later became a 32 page pamphlet.

In his journal Wooler was highly critical of Lord Liverpool and his government and within three months he had been arrested and charged with seditious libel. The prosecuting council argued that Wooler had written the articles that had libeled the government. However, Wooler, who defended himself, was able to convince the jury that although he had published the article, he had not written it, and so was therefore not guilty.

The court case did not stop Wooler from publishing the Black Dwarf and he continued to use the journal to argue the case for parliamentary reform. Wooler was also an active supporter of Major John Cartwright and his Hampden Club movement. In 1819 Wooler joined the campaign to elect Sir Charles Wolseley to represent Birmingham in the House of Commons. As Birmingham had not been given permission to have an election, Wooler and his fellow campaigners were arrested and charged with "forming a seditious conspiracy to elect a representative to Parliament without lawful authority". Wooler was found guilty and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment.

After the death of his main patron, Major John Cartwright, in 1824, Wooler decided to stop publishing the Black Dwarf. For a while Wooler was the editor of the British Gazette but after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act he gave up politics and became a lawyer. In later life Wooler wrote books and pamphlets on the British legal system, including Every Man his Own Lawyer (1845). Thomas Jonathan Wooler died on 29th October 1853.

Wooler is the one with the bellows in this contemporary cartoon

Below is Wooler's wonderful critique of Robert Owen, the paternalistic New Lanark mill owner often dubbed a British proto-socialist by historians because of his concern for the moral and physical welfare of his workforce. Wooler has a different view.

Thomas Wooler, Black Dwarf (20th August 1817)
The principal justification of Mr Owen's pretensions are that he has succeeded in changing, as he calls it, the moral habits of the persons under his employment in a manufactory at Lanark, in Scotland. For all the good he has done in that respect, he deserves the highest thanks. It is much to be wished, that all who live by the labour of the poor would pay as much attention to their wants and to their interests as Mr Owen did to those under his care at Lanark.

But it is very amusing to hear Mr Owen talk of re-moralizing the poor. Does he not think that the rich are a little more in want of re-moralizing; and particularly that class of them that has contributed to demoralize the poor, if they are demoralized, by supporting measures which have made them poor, and which now continue them poor and wretched?

Talk of the poor being demoralized! It is their would-be masters that create all the evils that afflict the poor, and all the depravity that pretended philanthropists pretend to regret.

In one point of view Mr Owen's scheme might be productive of some good. Let him abandon the labourer to his own protection; cease to oppress him, and the poor man would scorn to hold any fictitious dependence upon the rich. Give him a fair price for his labour, and do not take two-thirds of a depreciated remuneration back from him again in the shape of taxes. Lower the extravagance of the great. Tax those real luxuries, enormous fortunes obtained without merit. Reduce the herd of locusts that prey upon the honey of the hive, and think they do the bees a most essential service by robbing them. The working bee can always find a hive. Do not take from them what they can earn, to supply the wants of those who will earn nothing. Do this; and the poor will not want your splendid erections for the cultivation of misery and the subjugation of the mind.

There is however much more to the career of Tariq Ali than his short period as editor of The Black Dwarf's second incarnation in the 1960s. Throughout more than 40 years of activism and unswerving commitment to the so-called 'new left' agenda, Ali has inspired progressive political discourse in the UK and beyond with his contribution to the debates of the time. He personally inspired me as a youth back then opposing the Vietnam war and Tariq Ali remains a voice of reason and rationality in Britain and the world today.

To fall back yet again on Wikipedia which for all it's faults is the bloggers best friend, I repost their entry on Tariq Ali in it's entirety below.

Tariq Ali

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali (Urdu: طارق علی) (born October 21, 1943) is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator.[1][2] He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, Counterpunch, and the London Review of Books.

He is the author of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002).

Contents

Career

Ali, the eldest of three children, was born and raised in Lahore, British India, now Pakistan. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and later Chief Minister of the Punjab in 1937).

While studying at the Punjab University, he organized demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship. Ali's uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.[3] He was elected President of the Oxford Union debating club.

His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies, and emerged as a figurehead for critics of American foreign policy across the globe. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy.

Active in the New Left of the 1960s, he has long been associated with the New Left Review. Drawn into revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper, he joined a Trotskyist party, the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the (reunified) Fourth International.

During this period, he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the February 1974 UK general election and was co-author of Trotsky for Beginners, a cartoon book. In 1981, the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party: the IMG was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party that year.

In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc. The book contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement.

His book Bush in Babylon criticizes the 2003 invasion of Iraq by American president George W. Bush. This book has a unique style, using poetry and critical essays in portraying the war in Iraq as a failure. An atheist who grew up around Muslims, Ali believes that the new Iraqi government will fail.

His previous book, Clash of Fundamentalisms, puts the events of the September 11 attacks in historical perspective, covering the history of Islam from its foundations.

Ali has been a critic of modern neoliberal economics and was present at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil where he was one of nineteen to sign the Porto Alegre Manifesto.

He has been described as "the alleged inspiration" for the Rolling Stones' song "Street Fighting Man", recorded in 1968 [1].

He currently lives in Highgate, London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha, Chengiz, and Aisha.

Tariq Ali's The Leopard and The Fox, first written as a BBC screenplay in 1985, is about the last days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Never previously produced because of a censorship controversy, it is finally to be adapted and staged as a play by Alter Ego Productions in mid October 2007. [2]

References

  1. ^ Tariq Ali Biography, Contemporary Writers, accessed October 31 2006
  2. ^ "As 250 Killed in Clashes Near Afghan Border, British-Pakistani Author Tariq Ali on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Ongoing U.S. Role in Regional Turmoil". Democracy Now!. 2007-10-10. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
  3. ^ Tariq Ali profile. BBC Four Documentary article. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.

Bibliography (partial)

External links


The Church of Aaran Aardvark therefore invites the congregation to celebrate the lifetime of achievements of Tariq Ali and to join in wishing him a fruitful and productive New Year.
 When we feel that the task ahead of us is overwhelmingly daunting and we feel isolated in the struggle for something resembling sanity in the world, we should stop and contemplate the work of people like Tariq Ali in our own time and Thomas Wooler in the past to give us inspiration for the task ahead.

PEACE and SANITY in 2008

In the light of recent and ongoing events in Pakistan please see Tariq Ali's excellent analysis based on his first hand knowledge of the Pakistani politics and his personal acquaintance with Benazir Bhutto and other important players at the link below. Highly recommended text.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/print/ali_01_.html

This Blog is Brought to You by the Church of Aaran Aardvark

Black Dwarf Anticipation Symposium 2007


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14 Dec 2007

India File 2




















Anarchist Dharma

In this second blog on modern India I attempt to give an impression of this contradictory and enigmatic country.
I did not go to India seeking anything other than to experience being there. During my first trip there nearly 30 years ago. I had already become sceptical of the holy pretentions of the Guru industry and that scepticism has not diminished over the years. What I had expected to find was a country that had moved on in some sort of positive way and had benefitted from it's new found wealth.

What I found was a country that in many respects seems to have taken a step backwards.

The most depressing element of this situation is that there do not seem to be any political solutions to the problems India faces. There is no apparently serious movement for positive change that would address the crushing poverty and general state of collapse of India's infrastructure. Yes, there are projects to bring cable tv to those in Delhi who can afford it and to increase broadband speed for those able to access the internet, but for those who live in the rural areas there seems to be little progress, infact the reverse.

Various taxi drivers and rickshaw pullers will tell you that the problem with India is 'pollution, population and politicians' and in the midst of this an educational schism that leaves the wealthy holding all the cards and the poor holding nothing at all.

In order to begin to understand the social dynamics of Indian life and how these appear and are played out to the outsider it is essential to consider the way the Government and people relate to each other. India is a democracy, but a profoundly fractured one with a system of government that seems to be based upon privilege and corruption. Everyday Indian newspapers carry exposés of the corruption in high places. To illustrate this point here are a random selection of news strories that appeared in the English language press in India over a period of just the last 6 days

Mumbai 8 Dec 07: Deputy superintendent of police Ravindra Angre is refused bail in connection with an extortion case in which a builder was said to be threatened and intimidated into signing over a sports complex and other land and property to Mr Angre's wife. Mr Angre by the way is also vice principle of the police training school at Lonavia.

Sitapur 9 Dec 07: Unemployed women begging on the street to collect enough money to pay the "bribe" they allege was demanded by chief development officer of the National Rural Guarantee Scheme to release their state benefits.
The gentleman in question had already taken a 2% commission for administering the entire budget for this programme in the area.

Delhi 9 Dec 07: Television News In a bizarre incident here is a farm in Bihar's Vaishali district, where a 10 year old has replaced an ox at a plough which belongs to the family of the Union Minister for Rural Development, RJD's Raghuvansh Pratap Singh.
The minister's brother, Raghuraj Singh says that the fields are too slippery after the recent floods and its too dangerous for bullocks and a tractor would skid, so he hires children instead.

''We get children because there is a shortage of labour. The fields are too wet for the bullocks. So we have got children to plough the field before sowing,'' said Raguraj Singh, Farm owner.

The boy and his father are equally matter of fact about this. For them, it's a question of working on the fields or starving.
''We work to live. My feet and arms hurt but I still need to work if I want to eat,'' said Sonelal Kumar, Child labourer.
''Bullocks can't tread on this ground. So we have to do it ourselves with the children,'' said Ramkrishna Singh, Farmer.

Chennai 14 Dec 07: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK chief M Karunanidhi is widely expected to name his son MK Stalin as his successor at a state-level meeting of the party's youth wing beginning on Saturday.

The succession may be a two-stage affair to ensure that senior leaders in the party are not upset and the process appears democratic.

Stalin is now the local administration minister besides deputy party general secretary and secretary of the youth wing.

Karunanidhi, 83, is likely to make his 54-year-old son, named after the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, deputy chief minister to groom him to take over as chief minister later.


These stories gives some flavour of the the political and social environment I encountered in India.

Lest you think I am being oversensitive and unfairly critical of India, this latest story which has only appeared today makes the point I think.

Hyderabad 14 Dec 07: 'Two men attacked an 80-year-old, self-proclaimed holy man in southern India and chopped off his right leg, apparently believing it had magical powers, police said Thursday.

Yanadi Kondaiah, who claimed that those who touched his leg would be cured of illness or have wishes granted, was hospitalized in serious condition after the attack Tuesday, said R. Ravindranath Reddy, a senior police officer.

"We are looking for the miscreants as well as the leg," Reddy told The Associated Press by telephone from the Chittoor district, a remote area 340 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.

"This seems to be a case of superstition. The two people might have taken away the leg hoping to benefit from its magical powers," said Pendakanti Dastgiri, the police officer handling the case.

Superstitions, belief in magic and the occult remain widespread in much of rural India.

Kondaiah told police that two men offered him a drink as thanks for previously helping them with his magical touch.

After he passed out drunk, the men chopped off the leg below the knee with a sickle and left him to die, said Dastgiri, adding that passing villagers found him and took him to a hospital'.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071213/ap_on_re_as/india_severed_leg

If these stories were not so tragic they would be darkly hilarious. They illustrate the level of corruption and utterly uneducated superstition that allows the whole thing to continue and to increase at such a growing rate.

The population explosion in India is fuelled by the marriage of young girls who are getting pregnant at ages 14,15 or16 in increasing numbers. However the not uncommon abortion of female foetuses and the dowry driven infanticide of girl babies will eventually address this issue of procreative excess.... in a generation I suppose.

While the sights of India remain stunning the social fabric is under enormous strain. In many countries they would have snapped by now, although in India there is evidence of increasing inter-caste/class/ethnic tensions, the 'quietism' of India's religious devotion helps damp these down amongst many groups. The result is that almost all roads lead to crime, the privatization of political antagonisms and the feathering of ones own nest. It is not entirely clear what India needs, but it does need something. The local press described the current government as 'left wing', all I can say is in that case God help India if they ever have a 'right wing' government.

Having said all that, I was truly amazed at television footage and press reports of Indian environmental activists demonstrating in support of climate change initiatives at the Bali Conference which started whilst I was in India. Despite all of the injustices and crises that fill the Indian media, these demonstrators are campaigning on the big global issues that affect us all.

This is the most optimistic thing I saw in India, it is just possible that the environmental movement is the only vehicle for change in India and across the world. They do have a cultural advantage here, the Jains for example with their fundamentalist respect for all of existence might be said to be the very essence of modern environmentalism, distilled down to it's most pure form.

In India given the institutionalisation of disadvantage some sort of green anarchism seems to be the only answer as communities seek to liberate themselves from the dead hand of bureaucratic corruption.

Theoretically India could be at the forefront of such a life preserving struggle, it seems to me that the people have little to lose from the overthrow of the existing system. The crucial factor here is education, the movement that achieves that on a wide enough scale will inherit India and all it's riches in due course. India must do this I think to save itself, but more particularly India must do this to save the world.

Teachers are the front line soldiers of that revolution, but the road is a very dangerous one.



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13 Dec 2007

Khajuraho Erotic Carvings

PLEASE CLICK ON PICTURES
































These few images are from my recent visit to the 1,000 year old temple complex at Kajuraho, Madyha Pradesh, India. The carvings are incredible and depict all sorts of sexual activity not flinching at masturbation or even bestiality. They speak of another time when the social mores were very much different to the India of today. I have seen much sexual imagery in the form of phalic stone lingams representing Shiva and stone iron female yonis festooned with flowers elswhere on the Indian sub-continent, but nowhere is sexual union so graphically and finely depicted as in Khajuraho.





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24 Nov 2007

Coup Alert Venezuela

Entry for 23 November 2007
Entry for 23 November 2007 magnify




Democracy: the Threat of a Good Example
There is much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands again in Washington because that dreaded scourge of all proto-fascist oligarchies-democracy- has again raised it's head in Latin America.


Despite all of the efforts of the Bush regime democracy is again on the rise in the region to the deep consternation of the US government and it's private sector subsidiaries.

Currently the CIA and other foreign secret services operatives are busily attempting to engineer a coup d'etat in Venezeula in order to depose Hugo Chavez and facilitate that old fascist favourite... regime change.

The same strategy as the US and it's allies have deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq is now being deployed again in it's own backyard.

There is of course nothing new in this, we only need cast our minds back to the 638 CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro*, the Bay of Pigs debacle, the invasion of Grenada, the Iran-Contra affair and the US war against democracy in Nicaragua 20 odd years ago, to see a clearly discernible pattern which is again in evidence in Venezuela.
However the credible threat to Chavez and Venezuelan democracy should be taken very seriously now at this time.

The corporate US media has mounted an increasingly shrill propaganda campaign that is presently spreading pernicious disinformation about Mr Chavez and his government.

The Bush regime has now tried on 3 occasions to remove Chavez since it's failed 2 day coup damp squib in Caracas in April 2002.

'Bushco' now sees the last chance to oust him before the vote on the new constitution next month and thereby stop the democratic revolution he has forged in Venezuela since taking office in February 1999.

Assassination attempts, abortive coups, civil disturbances and terrorist attacks have punctuated the almost 6 six years of the Chavez presidency, compliments of the CIA and it's client organizations inside and outside Venezuela.

For President Chavez's perspective on this outrageous illegal aggression against him and his country by the government of the United States and the moles and patsies they nurture, please see the interview Chavez gave to the US radio station KPFK in New York City, September 2005 at the following link. (transcript)

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/1330218

The CIA is now in the process of again attempting to organise another coup d'etat in Venezuela ahead of the crucial vote on the new constitution (the 27th since 1821) on 2 December.

The neocon coup leaders in Washington are terrified of the changes that Chavez proposes to the Venezuelan Constitution, they are terrified of constitutions in general and that is why they have effectively abolished the US one, since seizing power in the 11 September 2001 US coup.

Chavez is the head of a country that earlier this year committed the cardinal capitalist sin of nationalizing it's own oil reserves.

The anti-Chavez hysteria in the US corporate media was cranked up to fever pitch when he redistributed oil wealth to the people in May this year and Venezuela announced plans to withdraw from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
This bold act of democratic populism won Chavez massive support in Venezuela and iconic status amongst the poor and dispossessed of Latin America... where his stature has grown exponentially over the past few years.

From a report by The Guardian newspaper's economics editor Larry Elliott (2 May 2007) this move was greeted with massive enthusiasm in Venezuela's oil fields by all.... but the big oil mega-corporations.

"Amid jubilant scenes, oil workers wearing red T-shirts emblazoned with "yes to nationalisation" moved into the giant Orinoco basin shortly after midnight after Caracas insisted six of the world's biggest oil companies cede operational control.

Three US companies - ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, together with BP, Norway's Statoil and France's Total agreed to transfer operational control to state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela".

This move has been correctly interpreted as a direct slap in the face to the US led oil corporatocracy in general and the Bush junta in particular.

Now to add political injury to economic insult so far as Washington's neocons are concerned, Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms threaten genuine democracy in stark contrast to the powerlessness of US citizens to have any impact whatsoever upon how their own country is governed and by whom.

On 2 December Venezuelans will vote on the new Chavez inspired constitutional reforms which are outlined below (See Global Research link):-

"The National Assembly (AN) completed its work on November 2 adding 25 additional articles to Chavez's proposal plus another 11 changes for a total of 69 articles that amend one-fifth of the nation's Constitution. The most important ones include:

-- extending existing constitutional law that guarantees human rights and recognizes the country's social and cultural diversity;

-- building a "social economy" to replace the failed neoliberal Washington Consensus model;

-- officially prohibiting monopolies and unjust consolidation of economic resources;

-- extending presidential terms from six to seven years;

-- allowing unlimited presidential reelections so that option is "the sovereign decision of the constituent people of Venezuela" and is a similar to the political process in countries like England, France, Germany and Australia;

-- strengthening grassroots communal councils, increasing their funding, and promoting more of them;

-- lowering the eligible voting age from 18 to 16;

-- guaranteeing free university education to the highest level;

-- prohibiting foreign funding of elections and political activity;

-- reducing the work week to 36 hours to promote more employment;

-- ending the autonomy of Venezuela's Central Bank to reclaim the country's financial sovereignty the way it should be everywhere; today nearly all central banks are controlled by private for-profit banking cartels; Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to end that status in the US and correctly explains the Federal Reserve Bank is neither federal nor does it have reserves; it's owned and run by Wall Street and the major banks;

-- adding new forms of collective property under five categories: public for the state, social for citizens, collective for people or social groups, mixed for public and private, and private for individuals or private entities;

-- territorial redefinition to distribute resources more equitably to communities instead of being used largely by economic and political elites;

-- prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination and enacting gender parity rights for political candidates;

-- redefining the military as an "anti-imperialist popular entity;"

-- in cases where property is appropriated for the public good, fair and timely compensation to be paid for it;

-- protecting the loss of one's home in cases of bankruptcy; and

-- enacting social security protection for the self-employed.

The National Assembly also approved 15 important transitional dispositions. They relate to how constitutional changes will be implemented if approved until laws are passed to regulate them. One provision is for the legislature to pass 15 so-called "organic laws" that include the following ones:

-- a law on "popular power" to govern grassroots communal councils (that may number 50,000 by year end) that Chavez called "one of the central ideas....to open, at the constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people (in an) Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power;" five percent of state revenues will be set aside to fund it;

-- another promoting a socialist economy for the 21st century that Chavez champions even though he remains friendly to business; and

-- one relating to the country's territorial organization; plus others on education, a shorter workweek and more democratic changes.

Under Venezuelan law, and in the true spirit of democracy, these proposed changes will be for citizens to vote up or down on December 2. The process will be in two parts reversing an earlier decision to do it as one package, yea or nay. One part will be Chavez's 33 reforms plus 13 National Assembly additions, and the other for the remaining 23 articles".

Reference link-Stephen Lendman (17 November 2007)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7369

As a major oil producer which has been subsidizing the cost of heating oil to impoverished US citizens for the past few years Venezuela has become a painful thorn in the proto-fascist side in the American corporate dictatorship and it's Bushite leadership.

The American coup leaders and their privileged right wing supporters and fellow travelers amongst the Venezuelan middle classes are desperate to stop these reforms and bring Chavez down.

American's should be aware (and I hope that many are) that they are being bombarded with lies and disinformation in the US corporate media about Chavez and Venezuela that is intended to justify further acts of aggression against him and his country.

In the run up to the phoney US presidential elections, where there are no real choices and no popular democracy, American voters might want to make demands for similar changes to their own defunct Constitution, as those proposed for Venezuela.

As the economic disaster that has been unleashed by the Bush regime against it's own people bites ever deeper, Americans could do worse than making demands for popular sovereignty that would free them from the nightmare of fascist autocracy they must currently endure.

They should stop listening to the propaganda which passes for 'news' in the mainstream US media and seek more reliable sources of information on the internet.

It is precisely because Chavez's Venezuela provides support to the poor at home and in the United States and seeks to extend the wealth and political power of ordinary people.... that the Bush regime and also Hilary Clinton (or whoever comes next in the glittering road show of fake US democrazy).... are absolutely desperate to stop it.

In the name of democracy and anti-fascism people of good will should therefore all defend Venezuela's national integrity and highlight the dangers it is facing from the criminal warlords of the American coup and their local patsies and hangers on.

This is a fight for legality over criminality, freedom over subjugation, morality over rapaciousness and civilisation over barbarism!

It's all the same struggle really....oppose US dirty tricks in Latin America and the threat of a CIA organised coup in Venezuela.... obviously...what else could any reasonable person otherwise do?



Viva Chavez ...Viva Democracy

Posted by Aaran Aardvark at 15:36 3 comments Links to this post
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