Reply #16: Thanks for the info on NED, and in the OP (on Mex.)! What's the AFL-CIO

[Peace Patriot]

doing, using workers' dues and their union, in conspiracy with Bushites to support rightwing candidates and undermine and destroy the Left in other countries? I wondered about this when I first heard of NED and AFL-CIO activity in Venezuela. I can't see anything in it for the AFL-CIO, or, in any case, for its rank and file. Maybe it's just a way of getting grants--or of achieving a labor presence/point of view within nefarious U.S. and foreign groups. Anybody got a clue on this?

It doesn't make much sense to me, even if the AFL-CIO leadership is severed from the rank and file, in the manner of the Democratic Party (--millionaire political operatives faking concern for the poor and colluding with Bush on turning the poor into slave labor and cannon fodder). Labor leaders have to maintain an appearance of being pro-labor, right? The issue in so many of these countries is labor rights--decent wage, safe working conditions, education, health care, etc. --the right not to be corporate slave labor. Also, clearly, the proliferation of sweatshops worldwide has greatly undermined labor rights here in the U.S. You get too uppity, they outsource all your jobs to Saipan and Cambodia.

The South Americans are fighting off these US-based global corporate predators, and utterly rejecting the economic model they impose (World Bank/IMF). You'd think the AFL-CIO would be cheering them on, or at least trying to appear as if they were--not joining the Dark Lords in direct electoral interference.

I'm also wondering about that oil strike in Venezuela--a strike of the rich, elite professional class, who were hording oil profits--that followed the coup attempt, in a second effort to remove Chavez, this time by crippling Venezuela's economy. (The third attempt was the Recall, which Chavez won handily in the most heavily monitored election on earth.) Of the three attempts, the oil strike was the most devastating, and almost succeeded. Anybody know what, if any, part the AFL-CIO played in that strike (which was basically a coup attempt)?

Chavez is NOT a communist--very decidedly not--and is not a violent or repressive revolutionary. He represents a badly needed ADJUSTMENT of the capitalist system with social justice measures--an ADJUSTMENT that is occurring with amazing peacefulness throughout Latin America (in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, where it has won the major elections, and with a growing movement in Peru, and even in Columbia--virtually the entire continent is moving dramatically to the left). Why would the AFL-CIO oppose this PRO-LABOR movement?