'And It Smells Of Sulfur Still Today'

Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you.First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who havenot read this book, to read it.

Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals,Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, Hegemony or Survival:The Imperialist Strategy of the United States. [He held up the book and waved it in front of General Assembly]

It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in theworld throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatestthreat looming over our planet.

The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the verysurvival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and weappeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat,which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from thisbook, but, for the sake of time [and here he flipped through the numerouspages] I will just leave it as a recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I'm sure Madame [President] you arefamiliar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. Ithink that the first people who should read this book are our brothers andsisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.

The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in thehouse.

And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here.[and he made a theatrical sign of cross on himself at this point] And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of theUnited States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking asif he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made bythe president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came toshare his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination,exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose atitle: The Devil's Recipe.

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing allit can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to dothat. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent's statement—cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperialhypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democraticmodel. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very originaldemocracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who areat the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, inthis room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists tellingyou can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terrorand martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother—he looks at yourcolor, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy presidentof Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

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 arestanding up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the restof your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all thosewho are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality,for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire,against the model of domination.

The president then—and this he said himself, he said: "I have come tospeak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that mycountry wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around NewYork, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we askindividuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want?Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United Statesdoesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage,of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? InPalestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in LatinAmerica and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela—new threats againstVenezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how yourhomes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get?What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetricprecision?

This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot fromthe hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israelfiring on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now wehear, "We're suffering because we see homes destroyed."

The president of the United States came to talk to the people—to the people of the world. He came to say—I brought some documents with me, becausethis morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to thepeople of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And headdressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addressesthose peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him ifthey were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the people of the south, theoppressed people think. They would say, "Yankee imperialist, go home."I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphoneand if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year wecame here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, andwe said something that has now been confirmed—fully, fully confirmed.

I don't think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let's accept—let'sbe honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It'sworthless.

Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year, see each other, makestatements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches,like Abel's yesterday, or President Mullah's . Yes, it's good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we've heard lots from the president ofSri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. Wehave no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in theworld. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September,that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be cruciallyimportant. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, ourambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here.The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories,(inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanentmembers. That's step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparentdecisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression—and that is something everyone'scalling for—of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto ondecisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United Statesallowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of allof us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and thepowers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell.And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten morecomplicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have justworsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the UnitedNations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within theUnited Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are,and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search forpeace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecutionand aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought anonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let's see. Well, there's been an open attack by the U.S. government, animmoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a postin the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls usextremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced theirsupport for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there's noneed to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened theconvictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur.Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member ofMercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressedtheir support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voicedits support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arabbrothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union.

Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countriessuch as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, andon behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council,will be expressing not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voiceof all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to beoptimistic. A poet would have said "helplessly optimistic," becauseover and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive warand the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There arealternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. Andthis has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown thatthe end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown aboutPax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It hasbeen shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breakingout all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea.I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. Wehave to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. hasalready planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and itcontinues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendousassassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free.And that other event where an American citizen also died were Americanthemselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be anotheranniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terroristattack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacionairliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took theresponsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail inVenezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed toescape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. governmenthas double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorismand violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. Andother tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also livinghere under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinatedpeople during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but Ithink God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army wastoo, and so I'm here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protectedby the American government. And I accuse the American government of protectingterrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came fromthere happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of theNonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don'tworry, I'm not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after opendebate in a transparent matter—more than 50 heads of state. Havana was thecapital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, thegroup of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, mybrothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum tothe Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony andprevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the nextthree years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to die." Butthey're going to be disappointed because he didn't. And he's not only alive,he's back in his green fatigues, and he's now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has beenborn, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closingmy file. I'm taking the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending itvery warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialistthreat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will seethis, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren aworld of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but arenewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nationssomewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief ofsecurity had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen wasallowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and anotherabuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God iswith us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.