PrintJanuary 31, 2007
Why not take Chavez's offer?
Regarding Marc Sheppard's article today, "The Kennedy, Chavez & Chomsky Pipeline":
I genuinely do not understand why Marc Sheppard so vehemently opposes Mr. Chavez's initiative. It is the first time a famous dictator and a threat to all of us stretches a hand of help to his adversaries.
Why we cannot organize campaign suggesting to ALL Americans to call this magic number 1-877-JOE-4-OIL and ask for help?
Are you against of using his free oil and gas? I am all for. My arithmetic is simple -- there are 300 millions of us in US (pun intended), and only 25 millions of poor chaps in Venezuela. The more money they spend supporting us the less money Mr. Chavez has to buy planes from Russia and doing all mischief he likes so much.
Most probably he will stop providing free oil for everybody and start to ask us to provide a proof of our lack of money to buy it.
Here US government may come handy by providing all taxpayers in this country with supporting documentation (ultimately we pay taxes and Feddies can send us several sheets of paper as a sign of gratitude). Let Mr. Chavez to hire personnel to go over all this paperwork.
When Mr. Chavez decides to surrender we declare him a hypocrite breaching his promises. If he continues to a bitter end we bid him farewell when he runs out of money. Please do not provide Venezuela any humanitarian aid after. Let us be ungrateful the first time.
I would recommend to members of Kennedy family start paying much more taxes on a voluntarily basis. As far as I know there is no law in this country precluding people from doing it. Nobody will send them to prison, nobody will complain. If they ask other rich people to follow their example nobody frets. Government can use their money for printing paperwork all of us will need to present to Mr. Chavez and have a free oil.
Last but not least - Mr. Chomsky. He is a famous scientist after all. US is a country full of highly educated people. This is not the case with many other countries such as Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, and so on and so forth. Some of them are pretty well advanced in nuclear physics and ballistics. As to linguistics (especially structural one) they are a total shambles. Could we recommend them to invite Mr Chomsky on a teaching tour?
I know all of them are pretty good in dining and wining their visitors. There is a slight hope (very slight) that Mr. Chomsky will like it there and stay. There is also a much better chance that his hosts will not like some of his lectures and will try to keep him locked for some time. If it happens let us petition US government not to rush with ultimatums and memorandum asking for his release.
Many great scientific works and fiction was written in prisons. Mr. Chomsky should not be deprived of his last chance to contribute to this collection.
Leon Iofin
