Address to the United Nations -
Rise Up Against the Empire!

By HUGO CHAVEZ

September 20, 2006
https://www.counterpunch.org

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 have not
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.'" [Holds up
book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an
excellent book to help us understand what has been
happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and
what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming
over our planet.

The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are
placing at risk the very survival of the human species.
We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal
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 this book,
but, for the sake of time," [flips through the pages,
which are numerous] "I will just leave it as a
recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I'm sure
Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears
in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think
that the first people who should read this book are our
brothers and sisters 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 the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil
came here. Right here." [crosses himself] "And it
smells of sulfur still today.

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

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze
yesterday's statement made by the president of the
United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came
to share 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 a title: "The Devil's Recipe."

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

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

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

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize
it or others who are at 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, in this room, and I'm quoting,
"Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can
escape from poverty and recover your dignity through
violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my
brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh,
there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president
of 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 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.

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 to speak directly to the populations
in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants
peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if
we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any
city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask
individuals, 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 States doesn'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? In Palestine? What's happening?
What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin
America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela
-- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my
friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we
have been doing for the past eight years, and we 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's be honest. The U.N.
system, born after the Second World War, collapsed.
It's worthless.

Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year,
see each other, make statements 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 of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the
president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely
deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make
any impact on the terrible situation in the world. 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 crucially important. We have to assume the
responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, 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 permanent members. That's step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world
conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is
something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-
democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on
decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of
the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity,
to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of 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 the powers 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 more
complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights
violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous
consequence of the collapse of the United Nations
system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this
battle within the United 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 for peace and the reformulation
of the international system; to denounce persecution
and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

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

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

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

And I would like to thank all the countries that have
kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even
though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need
to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they
strengthened the convictions 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 of
Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM,
Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The
Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its
support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world,
to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the
African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its
support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or
China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on
behalf of our people, and on 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 voice of 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 be optimistic. A poet would have
said "helplessly optimistic," because over and above
the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the
preventive war and 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 are alternative ways of thinking. There
are young people who think differently. And this has
already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It
was shown that the end of history was a totally false
assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana
and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal
world. It has been 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 breaking out 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. We have to build a new and better world.

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

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment
ago of the horrendous assassination 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 American themselves.
They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days
there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will
have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack
on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana
de Aviacion airliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent
who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane?
He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to
CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to
escape, 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. government has double standards. It
protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to
combating terrorism and 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. And other tremendously corrupt
people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here
under protection: a group that bombed various
embassies, that assassinated people during the coup.
They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I
think God reached down and our people came out into the
streets and the army was too, and so I'm here today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to
die." But they'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 been born, 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 closing my file. I'm taking the
book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it
very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

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

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to
put the United Nations somewhere 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 of security had to be left in a locked
plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive
and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and
another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It
smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace
you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.