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<font size=3><a href="http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25320" eudora="autourl">http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25320<br>
</a>Published: Thursday, February 03, 2005<br>
Bylined to: <a href="mailto:belial4444@aol.com">Arthur Shaw</a>
<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5 color="#A80000">Arthur Shaw: Disease
and illiteracy is exactly what Bush and Rice want for Venezuela<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2><b>VHeadline.com guest commentarist
Arthur Shaw writes:</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3> Evidently,
next to US imperialism, the Cuba believes that illiteracy and disease are
its greatest enemies. And, evidently, next to American military
aggression against other countries, US imperialism believes that
illiteracy and disease are its greatest friends. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2><b>The relationship between Cuba and
Venezuela is a case in point. <br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>Venezuela ... for decades a close
US ally ... has long been a country of fabulous oil wealth, but in the
last few years, Venezuela, led by President Hugo Chavez ... a patriot of
his country ... has hired Cuba to help it teach 1.2 million of illiterate
people to read and write.
<ul>
<li>The astounding success of the Venezuelan literacy campaign is an
important reason for Pres. Hugo Chavez' popularity with his own people
and unpopularity with US imperialism and the GOPs who fanatically support
it. </font>
</ul><br>
<font face="georgia" size=3>Cuban and Venezuela haven't stopped with
merely spreading basic literacy in Venezuela ... every year Cuba offers
grants to 2,000 young Venezuelans to study in any field of their choosing
at Cuban universities. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2 color="#A80000"><b>And Venezuelan
students eagerly and prudently snatch these grants. </b></font>
<ul>
<li><font face="georgia" size=3>This is on top of Cuba's preexisting
commitment to educate 20,000 Venezuelan doctors who will take over from
thousands of Cuban doctors currently practicing in Venezuela. </font>
</ul><br>
<font face="georgia" size=3>UNICEF -- a division of the United Nations --
estimates 860 million adults are submerged in illiteracy and 120 million
children never even get a chance to go to school. Although its only a
drop of help in an ocean of need, Cuba has sent over 15,000 teachers to
countries around the world to combat illiteracy. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=4><u>Still it's a lot more than the
United States has done. <br><br>
</u></font><font face="georgia" size=3>In almost every case of a country,
accepting Cuban educational and medical assistance, the degenerate GOPs
who now run the United States have strongly and publicly opposed the
acceptance of Cuban assistance by these countries. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=6 color="#A80000">Why? <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>The GOPs, led <i>(poorly)</i> by the
dictator George W. Bush -- who pretends to be the US president after
rigging the 2000 and 2004 elections -- seem to believe that the
illiteracy of the people of foreign lands helps the American imperialists
to steal the resources -- oil, minerals, labor or whatever there is of
value -- from these peoples and impedes their true understanding of the
political culture in which they live.<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2><b>Thus, the imperialist rulers of the
United States -- now, the GOPs -- vehemently oppose most efforts to
eradicate illiteracy in the foreign lands on truly nationwide and
multi-class basis. <br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>The American imperialists, who
steal resources from these lands, may however tolerate or even demand
education for the members of the parasitic elite and for the middle
classes of these countries. Indeed, these powerful American imperialists
-- Bush and his crowd -- may even expect or demand that individuals who
belong to the upper strata of the working class, which are closely
connected to US industrial interests, be able to read, write, count, and
compute. <br><br>
The best and the brightest minds of these privileged strata ... the
parasitic elite, the middle classes, and the upper strata of the working
class ... are sometimes shipped to the United States for superb training
in their technical fields. The best minds later are expected either to
forget about their home countries <i>(if they to the slightest degree
dislike or reservations about imperialism)</i> or return to their
countries and eventually serve as a "leader" who is subservient
to the interests of US imperialism. <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>But outside of these privileged sectors of the populations of foreign
lands which the US gleefully plunders, the imperialists who rule the
United States and exercise hegemony over many third world countries will
tend to oppose most attempts to educate the population at large on a
truly multi-class basis. <br><br>
</dl><font face="georgia" size=2>For the last 30 years or so, the US
imperialists have especially used the "Fund," (International
Monetary Fund)</i> among other agencies, to coerce or to jawbone one
third world country after another third world country to slash or,
sometimes, eliminate all educational opportunities for millions of
non-privileged children and other individuals. <br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>Protagonists and antagonists of
"neo-liberal" ideology often believe that it's all only a
matter of taking money from the kids, the old, the sick, and other
dependents to pay the interest on bonds and notes held by the
imperialists or other investors and issued by a third world state or by
private companies in third world but guaranteed by a third world state.
<ul>
<li>To be sure, the interest payments and the payment of principal are
matters of extreme importance. </font>
</ul><br>
<font face="georgia" size=3>But I submit that the aim of the so-called
"neo-liberal" measures imposed everywhere on the third world is
not primarily the discharge of debtor obligations with regard to interest
principal, but the deliberate and malicious destruction of the
potentialities of a generation of young people in third world countries
by means of disease and illiteracy. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2 color="#A80000">This is exactly what
Bush and Rice -- two of the most degenerate proponents of US imperialism
-- want for Venezuela. <br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>But Cuba's ethical values are the
exact opposite of those of the US imperialists ... Cuba urges everywhere
nationwide and multi-class education for the countries of the third
world. What's more, Venezuela and Cuba are at this moment looking into
the possibility of a continental ... not just nationwide ... assault on
illiteracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2>These Cubans have somehow turned
literacy campaigns into a fine art or, perhaps, even a science. Nobody
exaggerates or dramatizes if he concedes that the Cubans are good at it.
<br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>So, it's no wonder that Luiz
Ignacio Gomez ... the indefatigable Cuban minister of education, at a
conference of 5000 teachers from 46 countries this week in Havana
declares emphatically "Cuba can confirm that in 12 years it is
possible to teach 1.5 billion illiterate and semi-illiterate people of
the world to read and write to the 6th grade level." <br><br>
Now, UNICEF believes and warns that it will take a 100 years to do
this,,,. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2>Luiz Ignacio Gomez adds that this feat
will require about $10 billion...<br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>That's $1.6 billion less than what
US imperialism spends every
</font><font face="georgia" size=3 color="#A80000">TWO
MONTHS</u></b></font> to exterminate the Iraqi people. <br><br>
<font face="georgia" size=5>Arthur Shaw<br>
<a href="mailto:belial4444@aol.com">belial4444@aol.com</a><br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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