Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez delivered an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly the other day, and I think you should read it.
The New York Times treated it as regular old Bush-bashing, and covered it with the headline Iran Who? Venezuela Takes the Lead in a Battle of Anti-U.S. Sound Bites, but here are some of the quotes they didn't print.
"The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.
I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations."
The speech also contains plenty of grievances. There are complaints about globalization creating more poverty, UN Security Council vetoes, and the double standard with which America applies the term 'terrorist.' But it's the positive messages that make this speech so poignant for me. They allude to a world in which people are conscious of the forces that shape their lives, in which people are able to throw off their dependence on those forces that would oppress them. Harriet Tubman said "I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had only known they were slaves." Well, as Chavez says, "The world is waking up."
The full transcript of the speech is available at
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0920-22.htm Our newspapers call it antagonistic grandstanding. I suggest you read it as a list of simple truths, spoken by one who stands outside the Power which has given you, me, and especially the newspapers, so much.