Originally posted by zeeblebotMaybe they will and maybe they won't. If they do, it will be under the terms that the representatives of the Venezuelan people want, not what Western rich guys desire.
let's see how many companies are tempted to invest in Venezuelan infrastructure this time. it was such a good deal last time, why shouldn't they try it again?
http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/02/10/en_opi_esp_chavezs-achievement_10A2219249.shtml
EL UNIVERSAL, CARACAS, Tuesday February 10, 2009 | Update 12 dias
Chávez's achievements
Michael Rowan
The government claims Venezuela is a democracy but its electoral machinery has not been independently audited since 2003
...
Poverty: The government claims that poverty has fallen from half to one third of Venezuela's families but these claims are disputed by independent researchers and former Chávez Administration experts who should know. In any case, Venezuela remains the richest state with the largest poor segment of its population on earth.
Democracy: The government claims Venezuela is a democracy but its electoral machinery has not been independently audited since 2003, the legislature and judiciary have become rubber stamps for the executive, and the president commonly orders his employees to vote for his side or lose their jobs.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=326869&CategoryId=13303
Veneconomy: A Venezuelan Tale of Zamora, Controls and Shortages
Caracas, Sunday February 22,2009
From the Editors of Veneconomy:
This month Tuesday the 13th –an unlucky day in this part of the world– brought with it bad omens for the Venezuelan people.
It was on that day that the government announced measures that exponentially increased the controls on the country’s entire agro-food production system and also on the import sector.
Henceforth, following a short 90-day transition period, all products prepared from a same raw material that is used to manufacture a product whose price is regulated will be subjected to the control and intervention of the State. In other words, if the price of rice with 5% broken grains is controlled, the prices of all other products prepared using rice will also be controlled, including “premium” rice, imported rice flour, and, of course, chicha, a beverage made from ground rice.
And there’s more. The government is no longer simply setting prices, it is also setting production and/or import quotas for each product. And to top it all, it will tell producers what price they should charge each of their customers.
Faced with the current sugar shortage, for example, the government is forcing the sugar mills to hand over nearly 100% of their production to retailers, leaving industry, including the manufacturers of sodas and the bakeries, without sugar. (Please note that the prices of sodas and sweet baked goods will also be controlled.)
In other words, the government will say what should be produced, how much, and to whom the products should be sold. It will set wholesale and retail prices and profit margins for companies that prepare and import basic and not-so-basic products.
...
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/885023.html
'Good' tyrants impoverish the people
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER
www.firmaspress.com
Sunday, 02.22.09
Hugo Chávez has an uncontrollably generous heart. In 2008, he donated 45 million gallons of heating oil to 200,000 poor American families. The cost of that contribution was about $100 million. The gift was made through CITGO, the Venezuelan state-owned energy company doing business in the U.S. mainland.
How touching. A poor American family with four people earns, on the average, about $19,300 a year. A poor Venezuelan family the same size earns barely $2,920. In the United States, 12 percent of the population is classified as poor. In Venezuela, that rises to 42 percent.
Poverty in the United States is generally experienced in dwellings that may be gray and uniform but are supplied with electricity and running potable water. It does not exclude the possession of an automobile, air conditioning, color television, telephone, mail service, free education, food coupons, sewage, access to emergency medical services, police protection, a system of justice and a certain amount of money. In Venezuela, the setting usually is infinitely worse. No need to describe it; we all know the horror of tin-roof shacks, violence and privation that signifies being poor in Venezuela (or in Nicaragua, Bolivia and almost all of Latin America.)
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Originally posted by generalissimoThat's has nothing to do with it. The practice of slamming out page after page of cut and pastes into this Forum is detrimental to its purpose. People should give their opinions, with short quotes and full citation where desired. People are supposed to debate their ideas against other posters here, not merely copy other people's ideas ad nauseum.
Can't you bear to think Chavez isn't as good as you thought he was?
Originally posted by no1marauderI get your point.
That's has nothing to do with it. The practice of slamming out page after page of cut and pastes into this Forum is detrimental to its purpose. People should give their opinions, with short quotes and full citation where desired. People are supposed to debate their ideas against other posters here, not merely copy other people's ideas ad nauseum.
I just thought you were complaining because you disagreed with the contents of the cut and paste.
A very insteresting point of view by a columnist from the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5780319.ece
"In the wake of a Newsnight interview that I gave on last Sunday’s referendum in Venezuela, my e-mail inbox has been daily stuffed with vitriol from British and American men who have accused me of spreading lies about President Hugo Chavez, their hero. As far as I can tell, though, not one of them has actually been to Venezuela.
In the internet age, any man can join his chosen crusade without leaving the drawing room(like no1murderer?). The virtual political tourist can cheer on the celebrities championing the “good revolutionary”, El Comandante Chavez, who lets them wave at hordes of Venezuelans from the balcony of his presidential palace before catching their flights back to London or Los Angeles."
"I am a particularly easy target for the ignorant foreign dilettante: a white child of the oligarchy, I was brought into being by the oil business, when my American mother met my Prague-born father in Caracas in 1965 while visiting her godfather, then vice-president of Royal Dutch Shell. Then again, my own story is exactly what puts paid to the foreign mythology about Chavez."
"It was the Anglo-Europeans and then the government who stole or mismanaged the oil wealth, never the “oligarchs”, and until Chavez came along with his self-serving perversion of history everyone understood this."
"When my blue-eyed father drove his Mercedes home to the country club through the Puente de Chapellin slum, the locals waved at him, for they knew that we provided 3,300 jobs and the Neumann Foundation funded poverty reduction programmes from vocational training for single mothers to literacy programmes to free medical and dental care. Last time I drove through the Puente de Chapellin I was surrounded by an angry mob that took a baseball bat to my car. This is Chavez’s great achievement: violence and near civil war."
Originally posted by generalissimo:'(:'(
A very insteresting point of view by a columnist from the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5780319.ece
"In the wake of a Newsnight interview that I gave on last Sunday’s referendum in Venezuela, my e-mail inbox has been daily stuffed with vitriol from British and American men who have accused m all bat to my car. This is Chavez’s great achievement: violence and near civil war."
It breaks my heart to hear that foreign rich folks aren't idolized in Venezuela. Chavez and his party keeps getting elected by the people; previously pampered foreigners should bitch at them.
Originally posted by no1marauderChavez is as corrupt as any politician who buys himself into office. Where would he be without his oil money ?
:'(:'(
It breaks my heart to hear that foreign rich folks aren't idolized in Venezuela. Chavez and his party keeps getting elected by the people; previously pampered foreigners should bitch at them.
Originally posted by ivanhoeHe had no "oil money" in 1998. How'd he "buy himself into office" then?
Chavez is as corrupt as any politician who buys himself into office. Where would he be without his oil money ?
Isn't there a slight possibility that the majority of the people of Venezuela agree with his policies?