From Brazil: We Are All Americans

[babylonsister]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/10990/somos-todos-americanos/

We Are All Americans

By Sergio Malbergier

That the United States of America provides this ray of hope for the depressed global scene is so much the better. Among the truly awful inheritances handed down from eight years of Bush, perhaps the worst is such acute and unintelligent anti-Americanism.

Translated By Anthony Enriquez

05 November 2008

Brazil - Folha de Sao Paulo - Original Article (Portuguese)


Never before in the history of this planet has a mixed-race person of African descent been its most powerful inhabitant. No longer. No matter how many surveys had presaged Barack Obama’s victory, it is of such epic and multi-dimensional proportions that it fills us with awe and excitement.

Obama is a global phenomenon, and his victory reflects not only the choice of a majority of Americans, but of a great majority of the human race, giving him even more legitimacy as a leader. And leadership is needed to pull back the world from this recession of still unknown dimension and by all accounts of nastiness. That the United States of America provides this ray of hope for the depressed global scene is so much the better. Among the truly awful inheritances handed down from eight years of Bush, perhaps the worst is such acute and unintelligent anti-Americanism.

As irrational as it is widespread, it feeds and, for some, even justifies dark and dangerous forces such as the Russian neo-tzarist movement, or Chinese absolutism, or the petroleum populism of Chavez, or Iranian nuclear messianism, or Muslim terrorist fascism. Absurd prejudices, like those calling the United States a country of idiots, ignorants and hicks are spat out by the so-called worldwide intelligentsia, even though the country has the best universities on the planet, is the world’s largest producer and consumer of culture, is its greatest and most innovative creator of technology, has the greatest number of Nobel prizes, has invented the Internet and YouTube and is by far the world’s largest economy.

And the old line, “New York is great, but nothing at all like the United States”? That’s like saying “São Paulo is fantastic but nothing at all like Brazil.” And to those who thought it impossible that the U.S., so “racist and reactionary,” would elect a black, progressive president in such a decisive manner? (Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to what year Brazil, with many more descendants of Africa, will have a black president?) Americans could give no greater response to world (and to Bush’s legacy) than to carry Michelle and Barack Obama to the White House.

Not that his glorious electoral victory, no matter how impacting and transformative, guarantees a happy ending to the sad story of George W. Bush in Washington. The challenges are as great as the triumphs, if not greater. But the global satisfaction with Obama’s inspiring victory has already given a small push of encouragement to a world that had been slowly grinding to a halt.

Let’s celebrate for Obama and for what his tremendous victory represents. Today, we are all Americans.

[Demeter]

1. Frankly, I'm Grateful To Have Elected a Smart, Ethical, Educated Person

regardless of sex, color, creed,or age.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "Absurd prejudices, like those calling the United States a country of idiots,

ignorants and hicks...".

Yeah, well, you could get that impression of the people of the north by just asking them a few questions about, say, Venezuela (where is it? is it a democracy? are its elections transparent? who is giving $6 billion in military aid to its neighbor? what is ALBA? what is USASUR? what is the purpose of the Bank of the South?)

Too many of our fellow and sister citizens would get stumped by question one: where is it?

One thing they do know for sure, though, is that guy Chavez, he's a "dicator."

I'm sorry, but this is the level of ignorance of TOO MANY of our people. I will say in their defense that they are subjected to non-stop propaganda from the Corpo/Fascist 'news' monopolies on a few simple, brainwashing points (Chavez is a "dictator," a "tyrant," a "strong man," "increasingly authoritarian" (Barack Obama!), a "friend of Fidel Castro"--but not that Chavez is close friends with half a dozen other leaders, all of them democratically elected, as he is, and who defend him and have his back, on these absurd, mindless "memes"--Lulu da Silva, president of Brazil, for instance.

Obama is going to get exactly nowhere, if he goes about South America calling Chavez a "dictator." They will laugh him off, as they do Bush.

Evo Morales (one of Chavez's good friends), the first indigenous president of Bolivia sent this message to Fernando Lugo, the new leftist president of Paraguay, when he was elected this year: "Welcome to the Axis of Evil!"

The Bushwhacks, and all previous U.S. governments, including Clinton's, did enormous damage to South America--from the torture and slaughter of tens of thousands of people, by U.S.-supported dictators--true dictators (including this year, over 40 union leaders murdered in Colombia, the recipient of the $6 billion in military aid, next door to Venezuela)--to U.S.-dominated "free trade" and ruinous World Bank/IMF loans. Resentment of these horrors, and this rapacious exploitation to the point of ruin, is not an "absurd prejudice." It is a perfectly reasonable political position, and one that any good leader--a true representative of his or her people--would take.

If Obama equates being anti-U.S.-dominated "free trade" and anti-World Bank/IMF as being "anti-U.S.," then he is going to suffer the fate of the Bushites, and get nowhere in South America. And if he takes the attitude that the U.S.--which is one of the most damaged democracies in the western world--has a right to criticize their much better functioning democracies, and call their elected leader a "dictator" because he dictated to the fuckwads at Exxon Mobil, Obama is simply going to lose out. They won't listen to him. They know better.

You know, Chavez should say to him, if Obama ever meets with this 'enemy,' "Show me the proof that you were actually elected, Barack. Show me the ballots. Ah! Half your country has no paper trail? And you vote electronically with this 'TRADE SECRET' code, owned by Republicans? Isn't that kind of idiotic? We use electronic voting here, but we have OPEN SOURCE code--anyone can review the code--and, even so, we handcount 55% of the votes, as check on machine fraud. How much do you hand-count?"

And Barack would be forced to repeat that, "well, half the country has no paper ballot at all. So these votes can't be hand-counted, or audited in any way. And the other half do one percent."

"I see, one percent--and half do no audit at all," Chavez would say. "Tell me, how do I know that I am really speaking to the President of the United States? Perhaps someone else was elected."

South American leaders are shrewd, smart, democratic with a small d, into social justice and political/economic integration, into bootstrapping their people, into cooperative infrastructure and development, and are on their own path. They have all of these good qualities BECAUSE their countries are democratic, and talent and good leadership tend to rise to the top in a democracy. They won't be fucked with any more. And neither the Financial Times nor the Associated Pukes calling them "anti-U.S.," or "dictators," or some kind of menace, makes it so. It isn't so. They want to stop being dominated by the U.S. and achieve full sovereignty. That is not being "anti-U.S." That is being pro-justice.

Chavez doesn't hate the U.S., or Barack Obama, or us. He hates--or, I should say, ridicules and opposes--BUSH and BUSHWHACKS, like the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, who was recently funding and organizing fascist rioters and murderers, and got himself thrown out of Bolivia. That is not "absurd prejudice. That is common sense.

So, what I'm getting at is, that criticizing other leaders and peoples who have suffered grave injuries at U.S. hands, or at the hands of our global corporate predators, for objecting to such abuse, and for developing a negative attitude toward our representatives, is going to take you to a dead end.

Now consider this absurd grouping: "As irrational as it is widespread, it feeds and, for some, even justifies dark and dangerous forces such as the Russian neo-tzarist movement, or Chinese absolutism, or the petroleum populism of Chavez, or Iranian nuclear messianism, or Muslim terrorist fascism." --Sergio Malbergier

"Dark and dangerous"? Dick Cheney is "dark and dangerous." Exxon Mobil is "dark and dangerous." Chavez is using Venezuela's oil--nationalized long before his time (as is Norway's and other countries'}, with newly renegotiated contracts that give the Venezuelan people more of a share in the profits, for education, universal health care, low cost housing, loans and grants to small business, baseball fields in poor neighborhoods, the Venezuelan Children's Orchestra, and other benefits, and for regional infrastructure projects and regional loans and financing of development.

How is that "dark and dangerous"? That is what the people of Venezuela voted for, in large numbers, repeatedly, in the most transparent elections in the western hemisphere.

If that is "dark and dangerous," then democracy and social justice are "dark and dangerous," and if that is the view that the U.S. is going to continue to take, South America will just proceed with its own "Common Market," sans the U.S., and to hell with us.

If Obama is going to be speaking, out of the side of his mouth, for Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, and Monsanto, and the U.S. arms industry and their corrupt "war on drugs," and the World Bank/IMF, et al, he might as well stay home.

Chavez has been thrifty. Venezuela has saved nearly $40 billion in international money reserves, while experiencing a blistering economic growth of nearly 10% for the last five years, with most of the growth in the privatesector (not including oil). They are well-fortified against the recent Financial 9/11 on Wall Street, and have helped fortify their neighbors and allies. Bolivia just kicked the entire U.S. "war on drugs" out their country--also for interference. They basically said, "We don't want our money. Go away." Ecuador is about to kick the U.S. military base out of their country. The new president of Paraguay wants the U.S. military out of his country. Lula da Silva has said that the U.S. 4th fleet--now menacing and spying on Venezuela's oil coast on the Caribbean--is also a threat to Brazil's Atlantic coast oil reserves, and has proposed a common defense in conjunction with their new "Common Market" (UNASUR).

These leader DON'T NEED and DON'T WANT the U.S. interfering in their counties any more. "We want partners, not bosses," as Evo Morales (a former union organizer) has said.

But if Obama and his team take this unfactual stance--as averred by this writer, --Sergio Malbergier--that South America's resistance to U.S. interference, and memory of rightwing coups sponsored by the U.S. as recently as this September--as irrational and absurd, Obama's niceness, decency, intelligence and newness are going to wear thin very fast.

"Today, we are all Americans." Uh-huh. When has that ever been the case, between the U.S. and South and Central America? We are NOT "all Americans" in the view of the U.S. government and its Corpos--or in the case of most U.S. regimes (FDR was an exception). Some of us "Americans" are more equal than others--those of us in the north, who presume to dictate to the south, or, to put it more politely--as Obama does--to provide "U.S. leadership" for our lesser brethren to the south.

They don't need or want our "leadership" any more. They have had their fill, and then some, of bloody U.S. schemes disguised as "leadership."

"We want partners, not bosses."