“…Freedom is not the Dark Ages, Freedom is a very new idea…
Look at the history of Mankind, thousands of years of history!
90% of all history has been run by tyrants, 90% of the World is run by TYRANTS ! Our government is becoming more tyrannical all the time….”

This speaks volumes for all the social engineering of this world: Hitler’s National Socialism, Stalin’s and Mao’s Communism, etc, etc…
HELL must be teeming with men with such ‘good intentions’.
Thank you, enough of that!

I sincerely wish “Venezuela’s socialism of the 21st Century” would succeed and show this crappy US government/system one good thing or two…but to say that one sounds ‘”like a free market, right-wing libertarian, a follower of Ron Paul, who hates the government” is a bit far fetched to say the least.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Ron Paul and only in the last couple of months I started to listen to him…and to me he sounds like a sincere, honest, principled, no snake oil salesman, a medical doctor and NOT a professional shyster/politician, who really is concerned about THE PEOPLE….

So, please, give some credit to this guy… even if his prescription for a world Nirvana does not meet your standards !

Chavez has even ticked off Mexico and Argentina somewhat with nationalizing steel and banking they own in Venezuela. Chavez has seized food from private companies to stock his state run stores. He tends to nationalize local business sectors when he cannot resolve conflicts.

Nationalizing oil did not take ownership away from foreign gringo owners – just gave Venezuela a better deal in the percentage of profits, although a couple of the bigger oil sisters refused to deal and are still in court suing Hugo.

He has promised Nicaragua oil which has not been delivered and laid a cornerstone for a Nicaraguan refinery that has not been built. In Managua they sneer – “Nicaragua is the 11th country where Chavez has offered the same refinery. He’s over-drafted, over-committed. He can’t deliver; that’s the reality.”

Unemployment runs at 20% and inflation at 10% with 60% still living in poverty. Chavez is not taking from the rich to give to the poor – he’s re-working deals with the rich; and taking from the middle class to give to the poor. In short time he will have, much like the US, destroyed the middle class whose innovation, initiative, and work are what build a nation. He will run out of funds to fuel his “ism” as the new working poor (former middle class) will be unable to sustain his massive social programs.

Chavez is trying to do his “21st century socialism” with half-measures and threats of more nationalization which never work out well. He can nationalize the cement and steel industries and build concrete cracker boxes in projects for the poor – his support base – but eventually someone has to pay for domestic consumption of goods produced. I don’t think his new best friends, Cuba and Iran, are going to do him much good economically.

And if the price of oil drops – he’s in deep shit.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I am not libertarian and do not like Ron Paul.

Well i am sorry to tell you that you are wrong, because Venezuela’s majority support Chavez with a whoppling of 73% of the Venezuelas voting population support him. You are wrong in saying that Chavez hasn’t touched the capitalists. Last time i checked Chavez nationalized the oil industry, communications, cement, transportation, schools, hospitals, etc. So where have you been lately? in Jupiter?

So good try my friend, but wrong. And Venezuela’s socialism of the 21st Century is doing just fine, it is going smoothly with its internal class struggles and bumps. As bad imperfect as Venezuela is right now, it is much better system than USA which has always been a racist imperialist plutocracy with the Democratic Party and Republican Party, with its internal surveillaince of American citizens, the wars without end, the CIA state terrorism, false-flags, vote-fraud, the destruction of the environment by the US government, the privatizations, and the empowerement of the already powerful wealthy ultra-right wing ruling classes, and the slavery of the already betrayed and oppressed working classes and immigrants

By the way, you sound like a free market, right-wing libertarian, a follower of Ron Paul, who hates the government. Libertarianism has never worked, it is a white-nationalist, elitist ideology doomed to really fail. And anarchism is a utopian system, it will never work at least in our lifetime.

So we still need a state, but a people’s state, not a corporate-state.

For more info on the Venezuelan Revolution go to:

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com

.

I knew James was holding back a little for a reason but not this time.

By the way I wish Mr Michael Hudson would explain to me the meaning of the phrase ‘MORAL HAZARD’ in the context below?

“A combination of deregulation and moral hazard bailouts for the top of the economic pyramid, not the bottom will polarize the economy all the more.”

It reads to me as if saying that Morality is an Hazard that ought to be avoided like the plague, which somewhat explains the behaviour of such august institutions…

Please enlighten me, thank you.

Venezuela is on the same well-beaten path as other national utopian prospects have traveled, and will not become a “real people’s workers democracy” b/c of the simple fact that a few workers will become bosses and bosses become entrenched and entrenched bosses become corrupted and criminal, as all bosses eventually do when they are granted access to treasury and power.

And amazingly, most folks (the “workers”) can be bought with a little bread, a little circus, a lot of slogans and promises, a free vaccination, maybe a notebook and crayons for the kids, a couple of extra pesos for recreational drug/booze ….

BTW – we are experiencing what I call the “trend times” – electing metizo/brown leaders bellowing against the powers that be – until they become club members themselves.

With all the cries of hope and change in the media, it appears white folks are unaware hope/change means a redistribution of the “affluence” … from the middle down – not from the top down. Even in Venezuela, Chavez has not touched the wealth of the wealthy, who if they wanted him ousted he would be ousted.

Ever wonder if things are moving along smoothly as planned for the new one world odor?

But USA has always been a racist plutocracy, not a people’s democracy

Couple of questions. Does “Pres.” stand for president? and what exactly is the author’s or your or the generally accepted definition of “affluence”?