Jane Fonda And America’s Vietnam War

Jane Fonda is news again. The issue is America’s Vietnam War. Memories of the war still haunt many. The war memories are also bright in the brains of those who resisted and opposed the war.

The acrid memory is difficult to blank out for those who had to accept defeat. For those standing against imperialism, it is impossible to forget the war.

In mid-July, in a blog posting on show business website TheWrap.com, Jane Fonda wrote that she was scheduled to appear on home shopping TV network QVC to introduce her book Prime Time about aging and life cycles. But QVC reported receiving angry calls regarding her anti-war activism of the 1960s and ’70s, and it decided to cancel Jane’s appearance. She wrote at the website: “[T]his has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! … I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us.” QVC, a unit of Liberty Media Corp, acknowledged Fonda’s appearance was cancelled, but said it was because of a “programming change.” She described it as QVC’s caving in to “extremist” pressure to cancel her appearance.

Jane Fonda, daughter of late screen legend Henry Fonda, won Oscars for roles in the films “Coming Home” (1978) and “Klute” (1971). Her 1972 visit to Hanoi, the capital of erstwhile North Vietnam, angered Vietnam War mongers. They nicknamed her “Hanoi Jane”. She is still ridiculed by hawks as they fail to get rid of memories of defeat. During her North Vietnam visit, she posed for photos showing her sitting atop a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun seat. She expressed regret about those images.

An Empire’s manipulation with its subjects’ minds, its power for the manipulation, and its confusing definitions get exposed with this incident. To it, aggression is patriotism, opposing war of aggression is synonymous to treachery. It turns indifferent to people making supreme sacrifices for independence, sovereignty, honor and dignity, and the right to self-determination. Its statements are made to appear authentic, although the authenticity stands on a void foundation of propaganda and media manipulation. It makes “truths”, and unmakes those when necessary; it hides truths and leads eyes and ears to its desired target that it intends to appear as stark fact although a single ingredient of fact is absent there. On behalf of the entire humanity, brave Vietnam stood for humane senses and duties. The Empire cannot provide an explanation to the supreme sacrifices the monks made on the streets of Saigon (now, Ho Chi Minh City), it cannot defend its action in My Lai, it cannot dissect the murder of Nguyen Van Troi.

That’s the reason the “American public”, as Jane Fonda writes about America’s Indo-China War (the war the Empire carried on in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia only a few decades back) in her My Life So Far, “did not yet know that the United States had been secretly bombing Cambodia since March 1969. Nor did we know that U.S. bombers, from 1964 through 1969, had secretly obliterated an entire civilization in the Plain of Jars in northeastern Laos.”

Jane tried to know the truth. Time keeps a role for itself in life. In many cases, age influences posture and type of action of individuals. So, Jane “mistakenly thought that the more militant [she] appeared, the more seriously [she] would be taken.” (ibid.)

That was not only a time of America’s war against peoples in Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia; that was a time “an America at war with itself…”; that was a time “antiwar sentiment was growing among active-duty servicemen”; that was a time “Master Sergeant Donald Duncan, a much decorated member of the special forces, the first enlisted man in Vietnam to be nominated for the Legion of Merit”, brought to Jane “newspaper articles about GI dissent and told stories about the ways servicemen were being denied their constitutional rights.” That was a time “soldiers questioned why, once they put on a uniform, they were deprived of the rights they had been conscripted to defend – the rights to speak freely, petition, assemble, and publish – and that when they claimed those rights, unjust punishments were meted out with no legal recourse.” That was a time “while the civilian anti-war movement was primarily white and middle-class, the GI movement was made up of working-class kids, sons and daughters … of farmers and hard hats, kids who couldn’t afford college deferments, and a preponderance of rural and urban poor, particularly blacks and Latinos.” “[W]hile dissent within the military had started in the mid-sixties mainly as random, individual acts, after the Tet offensive, things began to change. Dissident was no longer a matter of individual acts. GIs began to organize, not just around the growing antiwar sentiment in the military rank, but in response to the undemocratic nature of the military system itself.” (ibid.) That was a time, as Robert D. Heinl Jr., retired Marine Corps colonel and military historian, describes: “[O]ur army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near-mutinous.” (Armed Forces Journal, quoted in My Life So Far) That was a time she “had heard and read things that threw into question everything [she] believed about [her] country.” Jane felt she “couldn’t slow down while people’s rights were being violated, while people were being killed, while the war continued.” That was a time “the war had become an American tragedy…” That was a time in “a battle that pits bamboo against B-52, the victory for bamboo symbolizes hope for the planet.” (ibid.)

These incidents and senses took her to Hanoi. She watched from the aircraft window, before her plane made landing, her “country’s planes – bombing a city where” she was “about to be received as a welcomed guest.” (ibid.) She learns in Vietnam: “It is the long-term, cumulative effects of seemingly weak things that achieve the impossible.” During that trip, she innocently and mistakenly sat atop an anti-aircraft gun seat. “But the gun was inactive, there were no planes overhead…” (ibid.) Consequently, she was criticized, condemned, a call was made to boycott her films.

But the “story” doesn’t conclude there as it didn’t begin there also. As a flash back an editorial comment can be recollected that can help fill in the gaps of the war path: “And”, Paul M Sweezy, Leo Huberman and Harry Magdoff wrote editorial comment in June 1954 in Monthly Review, “if we send American forces into Indo-China, as Dulles and other high government spokesmen have repeatedly threatened to do in the last two months, we shall be guilty of aggression ourselves.” (“What Every American Should Know About Indo-China”)

But the aggression was made.

“It was June 14, 1965, and Johnson reached out to former President Eisenhower for his counsel on the Vietnam War. A decision was looming over whether to expand the U.S. troop commitment to the conflict. Eisenhower advised not only supporting South Vietnamese forces in action but also urged direct offensive action by American troops. ‘We have got to win,’ he said. … Meanwhile, the debate among Johnson’s advisors was growing. ‘In raising our commitment from 50,000 to 100,000 or more men and deploying most of the increment in combat roles we are beginning a new war -- the United States directly against the Viet Cong,’ Under Secretary of State George Ball warned President Johnson. ‘Perhaps the large-scale introduction of American forces with their concentrated fire power will force Hanoi and the Viet Cong to the decision we are seeking. On the other hand,’ he presciently cautioned, ‘we may not be able to fight the war successfully enough -- even with 500,000 Americans in South Vietnam -- to achieve this purpose.’ Ball confronted President Johnson with lessons from recent history. ‘The French fought a war in Viet-Nam, and were finally defeated -- after seven years of bloody struggle and when they still had 250,000 combat-hardened veterans in the field, supported by an army of 205,000 Vietnamese.’ Ball’s dissent was aggressively countered by the administration’s hawks. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara strenuously argued that if South Vietnam fell, Thailand would be lost, too. Rusk envisioned a wave of falling dominoes – even India would collapse under the control of the Chinese communists.” (Gordon M Goldstein, former international security advisor to the strategic planning unit of the executive office of the UN secretary-general, Lessons in Disaster, 2008)

The number of the US forces increased. The war escalated as the years rolled on. The aggression experienced effective resistance unparallel in human history. The ruling classes in the Empire faced a critical time full with uncertain choices.

The resistance to the aggression and the significant resentment within the aggressor forces, as Jane Fonda mentioned, weakened the aggressor. They had to concede defeat that saved them from bigger and graver defeat.

But Jane is still being condemned for sitting atop a seat of an inactive AA gun.

And, the Lessons in Disaster are not being learnt in the Middle East, in Africa, in Latin America as empires deny learning from history, as that is a limitation of Naked Imperialism.

Prisoners Protest in California

Prisoners' protest in California reiterates the old, but seldom ignored fact: in cases, there is no difference between center and periphery in terms of prison condition. And, prison, a tool to rule, mirrors ruling political arrangement.

The New York Times reports:

“Thousands of inmates at prisons throughout California have been refusing state-issued food in a mass hunger strike to protest conditions at the state's highest-security prisons, where some inmates are kept in prolonged isolation.

“The protest was organized by inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison's security housing unit, where prisoners are kept in isolation more than 22 hours a day. They stopped eating on July 1, and prisoners around the state have imitated their campaign. About 1,700 prisoners in all were continuing to refuse at least some state-issued meals on Thursday, down from a peak of 6,600 last weekend…” ( July 7, 2011 )

“On July 1, prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at … Pelican Bay State Prison started an indefinite hunger strike to protest the cruel, inhumane…conditions of their imprisonment.” ( FightBack!News , July 9, 2011 )

A rally was held in front of the State Building in San Francisco on July 8 to support hunger striking prisoners.

The maximum security Pelican Bay prison is designed to keep the “worst of the worst” prisoners in long-term or permanent solitary confinement, under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation that many consider torture. Political prisoners are often sent to similar prisons to isolate them and their ideas from the rest of the prison population. The overcrowded prison with capacity for 2280 prisoners now holds over 3100. ( FightBack!News , July 9, 2011 )

The hunger striking prisoners' demands include abolition of group punishment, administrative abuse, and debriefing policy; modification of active/inactive gang status criteria; compliance with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement; provide adequate and nutritious food; expansion of constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU status inmates (ibid.).

“The prison system in the U.S. is the most expansive and sophisticated … in world history, with over 2 million people currently locked up. This is a higher rate than any other country… Large scale protests by U.S. prisoners against their extreme treatment are becoming more common in recent years. Just last December, Georgia saw one of the largest prisoner work stoppage protests in history (ibid.).

John Rudolf reports:

Inmates in the Pelican Bay Prison “are held in windowless isolation cells for more than 22 hours a day and can have little or no contact with other prisoners for years and even decades at a time.” A group of prisoners expressed their “willing to starve to death rather than continue to submit to prison conditions that they call a violation of basic civil and human rights. ‘No one wants to die,' James Crawford, a prisoner serving a life sentence … said in a statement provided by a coalition of prisoners' rights groups. ‘Yet under this current system of what amounts to intense torture, what choice do we have?'”

The prisoners cited a 2006 report by a group of attorneys and law enforcement professionals that determined long-term solitary confinement practiced in the US prisons can create “torturous conditions that are proven to cause mental deterioration.”

The prisoners also called for an end to a policy allowing indefinite detention in the isolation unit. Gang-affiliated prisoners can be released from the unit if they “debrief” or provide information on other gang members. Those who choose not to “debrief” must serve a minimum of six years in the solitary unit and can be held there indefinitely if they engage in any activity that prison officials deem gang-related. ( Huffington Post , July 9, 2011 )

The NYT report said:

Todd Ashker, one of the Pelican Bay inmates who organized the strike, said in a statement conveyed through a lawyer: “We believe our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive change here is through this peaceful hunger strike. And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death if necessary.”

The report said:

“Most of the prisoners who remain on hunger strike are in security housing units like the one at Pelican Bay , where they are kept alone in windowless, soundproof concrete cells. To communicate, they have to yell from one cell to the other, although prisoner-rights activists in contact with the prisoners did not know if this was how they had organized the strike.

“A federal judge appointed a court monitor in 1995 to oversee changes at the security housing unit, including the removal of mentally ill prisoners from the block and an end to the use of excessive force.

“About 2,000 inmates are being medically monitored, with nurses conducting cell-to-cell rounds. At Pelican Bay , most prisoners have refused to meet with doctors.”

 

On May 23, 2011 , a report by Adam Liptak in the NYT said:

“Conditions in California 's overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates.

“Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision … described a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced ‘needless suffering and death.'

“The majority opinion included photographs of inmates crowded into open gymnasium-style rooms and what Justice Kennedy described as ‘telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets' used to house suicidal inmates. Suicide rates in the state's prisons, Justice Kennedy wrote, have been 80 percent higher than the average for inmates nationwide. A lower court in the case said it was ‘an uncontested fact' that ‘an inmate in one of California 's prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies.'

“Monday's ruling in the case, Brown v. Plata, No. 09-1233, affirmed an order by a special three-judge federal court requiring state officials to reduce the prison population to 110,000, which is 137.5 percent of the system's capacity. There have been more than 160,000 inmates in the system in recent years, and there are now more than 140,000.

“Prison release orders are rare and hard to obtain, and even advocates for prisoners' rights said Monday's decision was unlikely to have a significant impact around the nation.

“Justice Kennedy … said there was ‘no realistic possibility that California would be able to build itself out of this crisis,' in light of the state's financial problems.

“‘A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society,' Justice Kennedy wrote on Monday.”

An editorial of the NYT headlined “ California 's Prison Crisis” said:

“

Three photographs are part of Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion … Looking at the photos, there should be no doubt that the conditions violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

“…The third photo shows man-sized cages in which prisoners needing mental health treatment are held until a bed opens up. One inmate, Justice Kennedy writes, was found standing “in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic.”

“In their ruling, the panel noted that 12 years after the first suit was brought — and despite 70 court orders for remedies — conditions had continued to deteriorate horribly. A special master appointed by the panel studied suicides in California prisons and found the rate was almost twice as high as the national average for prisons. Almost three-fourths of the suicides were ‘probably foreseeable or preventable' because they involved ‘some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment or intervention.'

“But as Justice Kennedy reminds, if the Supreme Court did not impose a limit on California 's prison population, there would be an ‘unacceptable risk' of continuing violations ‘with the result that many more will die or needlessly suffer.' And that would defy the Constitution.” ( May 23, 2011 )

The long quotes from The New York Times tell a reality, which is a well known fact in many states also. Probably, someday, some mainstream novelist will create a novel that will reflect prison reality in the most advanced capitalist country.

Hannah Holleman, Robert McChesney, John Bellamy Foster and R Jamil Jonna discussed the prison reality in the US in their article “The Penal State in an Age of Crisis”. “The United States ”, they wrote, “accounts for 5 percent of the world's population, and almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. It is number one with the proverbial bullet when it comes to locking up its own people. No thug dictator, no psychopathic madman, anywhere in the world can touch the United States in this regard.” “Already, in 2009, there are cracks in elite opinion that has been quiet heretofore on the prison crisis, though they still remain on the margin with Jim Webb.” ( Analytical Monthly Review , Kharagpur, West Bengal , India , June 2009)

It will not be an irrational hope that lessons will be learned in other lands also.

A Defiant African Union

African Union's decision to ignore International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Libyan leader Gaddafi manifests a resistance to imperial NATO's design being imposed on Africa . The African resistance is getting generated in the background of a changing geopolitical reality with a declining trend of a section of capital. The AU defiance is actually against the world masters, especially NATO, the masters' military arm.

In its Malabo summit, the AU called on its members to disregard the arrest warrant issued for Gaddafi. The July 1 decision states that the warrant “seriously complicates” AU's efforts to find a solution to the Libya imbroglio. After a day of deliberations on Libya , AU invited the belligerent sides to talks which is expected to begin soon in Addis Ababa . The Libya-case was referred by the UN Security Council to the ICC in late-February, 2011.

An AU official has described ICC as “discriminatory” that only goes after crimes committed in Africa while ignores those committed by Western powers in countries including Afghanistan , Iraq and Pakistan . The AU motion recommended to its 53-member states not to “cooperate with the execution of this arrest warrant.”

The court that stands for justice at the top of the world is not without limits, flaws, and alleged designs. Competitions in geopolitics get reflected in its actions, and speed of work. The court that tries to lift itself up atop all to judge actions around peace and humanity regularly faces questions of partiality. Its acceptability is also questioned by major actors, who, on the other hand, try to manipulate laws of the world at their chosen moments.

The so-called unipolar world is going through a biased quest for “justice”, some of which sound tale- ancien : blood spangled Palestine, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, crude diplomacy in Kosovo, drone adventures over Pakistan sky, MNCs fuelling civil strife, sectarian riot and genocide for minerals and energy, atrocities and mass murder by private contractors employed by state, defacing of environment at planetary level by MNCs, murderous crude connections of capital, and similar “sacred” acts (being) carried out by shameless-faceless lords of the world.

There are countries constantly propagating for human rights, peace, etc. still no longer intend to become states parties to the 114-member ICC, and, as such, they have no legal obligations arising from their former representatives' signature of the Rome Statute related to the international court. To prosecute the “crimes of aggression”, ICC has to wait up to at least 2017.

Two geopolitical actors' attitude to the ICC is important. One is moving with renewed military vigor in Africa while the other one is making significant deals in the “dark” continent. Their collusion and collaboration sometimes appear “strange”, especially in the Security Council on Libya issue.

The US , not a member of the ICC, has strong concerns about the definition of the crime of aggression. The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The Bush Administration stated that it would not join the ICC. Hillary Clinton, as a candidate in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries on Feb. 13, 2005 said: the US has global responsibilities creating unique circumstances. “[W]e are more vulnerable to the misuse of an international criminal court because of the international role we play and the resentments that flow from that ubiquitous presence…” (Remarks of Senator Hillary Clinton, German Media Prize Dinner) In 2002, the US threatened to veto the renewal of all UN peacekeeping missions unless its troops were granted immunity from prosecution by the Court. In a compromise move, the Security Council passed a resolution on July 12, 2002, granting immunity to personnel from ICC non-states-parties involved in UN established or authorized missions for a renewable 12-month period, which was renewed for 12 months in 2003 but the SC refused to renew the exemption again in 2004, after the US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib came to light. (“ The Ambiguities of Security Council Resolution 1422 (2002) ”, The European Journal of International Law . Vol.14, No.1; Jim Wurst, “ICC: UN Security Council Resolves Immunity Debate”, UN Wire ; “Q&A: International Criminal Court”, BBC News , March 20, 2006 )

China having few overseas military commitments is still not concerned with its troops coming under jurisdiction of the ICC. But, as Professor Lu Jianping , Law School of Renmin University and Professor Wang Zhixiang , Law School of Hebei University, write, China cannot avoid ICC's jurisdiction in other parts of the world. China considers that ICC's jurisdiction is not based on the principle of voluntary acceptance; complementary scope provides the court the power to judge a state's ablity or willingness to conduct proper trials of its own nationals; crimes against humanity are prohibited in time of peace; the inclusion of the crime of aggression within the jurisdiction of the ICC weakens the power of the UN SC; there is scope to influence the ICC politically. (“ China 's Attitude towards the ICC”, Journal of International Criminal Justice , Vol. 3, No. 3) Moreover, the emerging global actor considers that the ICC goes against the sovereignty of nation states, and the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction has not been explicitly outlawed.

Despite these “reservations” or bargaining points by world players the court now acts in unison with NATO. It fails to take into consideration NATO bombings on civilian population.

Libya-aggression by the complex military coalition has exposed: incoherence at the centre of the world system, limits of power of the world powers, consequences of pseudo-friendship, adventurism and undemocratic practices, struggles for and in the name of democracy, and significant shifts in geopolitics. Failings of confident NATO-air strikes led the aggressors to attempts for physical annihilation of a leader of a country that took toll from his family. Initial AU offer for dialogue was brushed out by the Benghazi band bent on auctioning Libyan oil.

Of course, the Gaddafi regime has moved a long way from the days it nationalized the country's oil, kicked out foreign bases and funded the African National Congress at a time when Nelson Mandela was branded a terrorist. But, there is another reality. Time reports: “it's patently clear that” there are “sizable” number of Libyans, who are “passionately committed to his [Gaddafi] regime and willing to fight for it.” ( April 8, 2011 ) Reports in Countercurrents provide much vivid picture of reality: Libyan people getting mobilized to face NATO aggression.

In this backdrop, comes the AU stand on the ICC's attempted, and NATO instigated, coup de “ grace ”.

Lumumba and Nkrumah are “forgotten” figures; Bandung-days have faded away; vibrant non-aligned movement is only a memory now. But, as Samir Amin writes: “A new epoch of chaos, wars, and revolutions emerged. In this situation, the second wave of the awakening of the nations of the periphery (which had already started), now refused to allow the collective imperialism of the Triad [the US , Europe and Japan ] to maintain its dominant positions, other than through the military control of the planet.” (“The Trajectory of Historical Capitalism and Marxism's Tricontinental Vocation”)

With limitations within economy and of the classes, and the society and politics these shape, AU members alone cannot determine the flight-path of Libya incidents. MNCs with their strong foot dug deep in African mines and wells command much resources (financial, political, diplomatic and physical) and army of allies and underlings (from gangs of marauders to generals), own capacity to manipulate society, politics, media and brain, continuously sow seeds of conspiracy and division within the ranks of resisting social forces. But, there is scope for creating space in between competing capitals.

It should not be considered that the AU's stand on ICC issued warrant is going to be the final, flawless move. However, it is a diplomatic gain of Gaddafi regime. At the same time, it only signifies a long journey's beginning, beginning of a dream, a dream Nkrumah had: Africa Must Unite (title of one of his books).

Onward, Commander! Chavez Is Determined To Win His Fight

“Onward, Commander” were the words conveyed to Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President, now fighting cancer. Chavez has assured his full recovery.

Chavez said on television Tuesday that he is determined to “be victorious in this new battle that life has placed before us.”

He admitted his mistake of not taking better care of his health. “What a fundamental error,” he said.

Chavez said: “Now I want to speak to you from this steep hill, from which I feel that I’m coming out of another abyss.” “I want to speak to you now with the sun of daybreak that I feel is shining on me. I think we’ve achieved it.”

“I invite you all to continue climbing new summits together.” Concluding the speech, Chavez recited a revolutionary slogan often used by Castro: “Forever onward toward victory. We will be victorious.”

Chavez said that when he arrived in Cuba he had intended to have a simple checkup for a knee injury that had forced him to use a cane in recent weeks. But Castro had questioned him “like a doctor” and that tests confirmed the need for urgent surgery. After that initial operation, doctors began to suspect other problems, and Castro gave him the news of the tumor. Tests confirmed an abscessed tumor with the presence of cancerous cells making it necessary a second operation completely extracting the tumor.

After telecasting the speech by Chavez, Venezuelan vice president Elias Jaua said on television: “There is no time for sadness, but rather for courage and for work. Unity is what’s needed at this time.”

AP reports: “In videos released Wednesday, Chavez smiled and discussed with Castro Latin American history and his days as an army paratrooper. Two of Chavez’s daughters and a granddaughter joined in the encounter as the two men sat chatting.”

Andres Izarra, Venezuelan Information Minister, joked that a section of opponents, particularly those speculating about the health condition of Chavez were suffering from “Chavez abstinence syndrome”.

Chavez in his speech said: “Throughout my life I came to commit one of those errors that could easily fit perfectly in that category to which a philosopher called “fundamental errors” neglecting the health and also very reluctant to screening and treatment. No doubt what so fundamental mistake! Especially in a revolutionary with some modest responsibilities as the revolution came to me more than 30 years ago.”

In the speech he said that he was trying to ignore pain in his left knee for several weeks. But “Fidel, the man who has already exceeded all times and all places” identified the pain and questioned “almost like a doctor”, and Chavez “confessed almost like a patient, and that night all the immense medical breakthrough that the Cuban Revolution has achieved for his people, and much of the world, was put in our readiness, initiating a series examinations, diagnoses.”

“Thus was found a strange formation in the pelvic area that required emergency surgery at the imminent risk of a generalized infection”, he said.

“An operation was done. Another series of special studies confirmed the existence of a tumor abscess with presence of cancer cells, which made it necessary to perform a second surgical procedure that allowed complete removal of the tumor. It was a major intervention, performed without complications, after which I continued to recover successfully, while receiving complementary therapies to combat the various types of cells found and continue on the path of my full recovery.”

He called upon his beloved people:
“I invite you to stay together to scale new heights, there on the hill and sing a beautiful song for us from eternity”

Chavez concluded his speech with:
Gracias pueblo mío! Thank you my people!
Hasta la victoria siempre! To victory!
Nosotros venceremos! We win!

His speech mentioned the following dateline:
Havana, a beloved and heroic Havana,
June 30, 2011.

Chavez added:
For now and forever we will live and win!
Hasta el retorno! To return!