University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: On August 7, 2005, the municipal elections will take place in Venezuela. Generally, across the planet, in such local elections abstention is very high and nobody makes a fuss about such a normal phenomenon.

However, here in Venezuela, where President Chavez' popularity is probably way beyond 70%, the desperate "opposition" and the megalomaniac Bush-junta are using and abusing every possible meager "negative" sign to denigrate, to discredit, to character assassinate Chavez and therewith the whole Bolivarian Government and Revolution.

Hence, in reality, it is not the upcoming elections that are at stake ... not the real results of participating Citizen Power.  It is not even relevant who will win ... rather, it is the expectation of a very high abstention percentage (around 80%) that is watering the Werewolfish snouts of Sumate ... of paramilitary "death squads" and of other CIA agents and agencies operating in Venezuela.

Yes, we are living in a volatile, dangerous era of either world emancipation or global conflagration, of immenent "to be or not to be."

Generally, such epochs of possible social revolution, of historic transmutation, of human transformation, of emancipatory exodus, are characterized by:

* Rapid Changing Times, the turn of centuries and millennia, threatening "End Times";

* Sharp Contradictions, Technological Innovations, Dialectics, Negations, Scientific Discoveries, Inventions, Creativity, Creation;

* Genesis, Birth, the New, Germination, Blooming, Blossoming -- in a fiery word, Youth.

Concerning the latter, that mainly concerns us here, already on March 15, 2005 ... four months ago ... I wrote about how global fascism is trying to nip the New in Venezuela, the rising Revolutionary Youth, in the bud:

"To really assassinate Chavez historically, you (Bush & Co.) will have to wipe Venezuela, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, Asia, etc., from the very face of the Earth, and therewith yourselves too. And even then, eternally the galactic winds will still sing: ¡Uh, Ah! Chávez no se va!"

Currently, an important congress organized by many Venezuelan national universities, that concerns the "New Socialism of the 21st Century," is taking place here in Merida. Yesterday, July 20, on their way to the congress, a group of first year students that just enrolled in our School of Political Science at the University of The Andes visited me in my office.

They belong to the student movement "Utopia 78," whose current leading members are themselves graduating.  Having supported all their revolutionary work and efforts in our faculty, and having taught them the scientific and philosophic basics of Marxism and Socialism, they honored me to act as their "padrino" at the graduation ceremony.

In Merida ... currently a state that is not precisely emanating fertile soil for revolutionary germination ... and in an academic atmosphere that does not really nurture independent thinking, thought, theory and popular praxis, over the last years we did somehow succeed to elevate the students' degree of social consciousness and to create interest in, and to gain support for, the Bolivarian Revolution.

In fact, as a result of these arduous but constant and persistent educational endeavors, during the previous students' elections, one of the leading figures of "Utopia" even won the current presidency of the FCU, the local university student federation.

I was very happy to receive the new group of revolutionaries in my office. After having introduced themselves, one by one underlining their socialist interests and revolutionary convictions, I came to the conclusion, that probably all of them are more radical than my current fourth year students.

Jokingly, to retain their revolutionary sanity, I suggested that, in the first place, they should not have enrolled in this traditional puntofijista university ... that they should have gone straight to the Bolivarian University. I explained my fears about the possibility that over the next years the alma mater might extinguish their youthful revolutionary flames, might cut out their brains and back-bones, and then graduate them summa cum laude to serve the class interests of any bourgeois, democratic, capitalist State.

Finally, my turn arrived to introduce myself. However, instead of doing so, I asked the "nerds" what they know about me, why they decided to come, and why they are not in a hurry to attend the conference on new socialism that already began in the city center, and that will last four days.

Most of them, explained their working class background, about their parents who have already participated in previous class struggles, and how they became acquainted with socialist and Marxist ideas. All of them want to study, to know more about Marxism ... and, of course, they have been informed, that here in Merida the person most qualified to act and to teach revolutionary praxis and emancipatory theory ... the New Socialism about which their Commandant Chavez talks ... is "Yours Truly."

Some of them, secretly, have already attended my fourth year classes and seminars, and told me what fascinated them about the revolutionary contents, the independent way of reasoning, of the freedom to debate, to speak, to develop oneself as permanent teaching student and studying teacher.

All this was really balsam on my tortured academic spirit, to encounter such a large group of revolutionary, optimistic, militant students, sufficient to enter the Sierra Maestra with me.

We explained that this is one of the major victories of the Bolivarian revolution; like in Cuba, the social revolution politicizes a nation, a whole people, the poorest of the poor, it creates its own revolutionaries, with their own new science and philosophy.

A female student really surprised me. I asked her to tell us about her first year sojourn through the barren academic wilderness, and about how she discovered the serpentine road towards me, towards us. Jutta Schmitt, as ad honorem university assistant, was also accompanying us, and was participating in the debates.

As first year student, she told us how desperately she was looking for Marxist and revolutionary orientation. She attended many discussions and lectures which did not really fulfill her academic aspirations and expectations. In the noisy, hungry queue. in front of the student comedor (canteen) where everybody impatiently was waiting to get hold of a delicious plate, she heard students discussing the imminent threats of a possible magnicide against the life of President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias.

Of course, all shades of Venezuelan political life were discussing this issue ... and, of course, some totally blindfolded by mind and thought control did not realize the historic consequences of such a heinous crime. Others vigorously defended their President Chavez and their revolutionary government against North American fascism.

Concerning this issue, she related that another group of students were reporting about what they have just heard in their class of contemporary political analysis.

They spoke to her about a radical, polemical and controversial professor of the School of Political Science, who in his class explained the impossibility of assassinating Chavez historically, because socially and globally he already made and thought modern history and revolution, and, contrary to all golpistas and "escualidos," valiantly he continues to do so daily. And, that even if Bush & Co. would wipe out the whole "Third World" from the global map, and would bomb all the "wretched of the earth" to blazes, reducing them to atomic ashes, and therewith killing themselves too, yet, it would be all in vain, "eternally the galactic winds will still sing: ¡Uh, Ah! Chávez no se va!"

Having heard this, she immediately informed herself about the classes of "Analyses" of this unknown professor, and said:  "Bolivar and Marx, that is where I belong, where I have to go!"

She came, enjoyed her first class, and next Sunday she and her other comrades will be off to attend the weekly classes of the Bolivarian Circle "El Momoy" in Chiguara, Merida, that has already gained international renown, and whose reports, thanks to the creative, political journalism of Jutta Schmitt, have all already been translated into French, and published abroad.

From all over, comrades in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, ask for further information, want to join us, want to create a New Science and Philosophy, the Praxis and Theory of Socialism of the 21st Century.

Franz J. T. Lee
franzjutta@cantv.net