Liars love to lie and boy do they love to lie about Venezuela! Just about everything you read about Venezuela in the US media is simply a flat-out lie.The truth is that Chavez has dramatically improved the lives of the poor majority of Venezuelans.
In 1991, 90% of Venezuelans were poor and could afford only one meal a day. It’s not like that anymore. For decades, Venezuela had been run as a fiefdom by a small light-skinned elite who stole every dime the economy ever produced. The rest had nothing. No medical care, no schooling, no dentistry, no running water, no sewage treatment, no regular work, no electricity, no regular meals, nothing. The rich had everything and then some.
Granted the new Venezuela has not been too great for the business class and the elite. I do not know why the business class is screaming, but they are. That things have gotten better for the poor majority but worse for the rich elite is the sole reason for all of the lies and hatred about Venezuela you see peddled in the West. This is because the Western media only supports the rich of the world and hates all of the workers and poor over the world. This is their class bias as members of a ruling class.
Chicago Boyz is one of the worst reactionary blogs out there, cheering for the Chicago School of Economics crowd that ruined Chile and really destroyed the whole Third World in the past 30 years. This group was led by neoliberal libertarian Milton Friedman, the Godhead of the US “liberal” media. Time Magazine, a “liberal” magazine, has virtually hailed Friedman as the returning messiah. He gets similar hurrahs all across the US MSM where you will never find a single word against this awful man.
All neoliberals are liars. All Libertarians are liars. Neoliberalism and Libertarianism are only good for rich people, so those pushing it can’t tell the truth about their systems (that they are only good for the rich and bad for everyone else) because if they do, hardly anyone will support them. So they have to lie in the same way that conservative elites always lie to get the masses to support a project that enriches the elites and harms the masses. You can’t be honest and sell conservatism. If you’re honest about conservatism, no conservative would ever win an election. So lie they must and lie they do.
Let us look at the nonsense at this idiotic blog about Venezuela:
Is Venezuela Collapsing?
That’s the headline, so we are off to a lying start. Of course it’s not collapsing, but the headline puts this lying notion into your head so you think it is really collapsing. What is happening?
Right-wing hooligans, fascists and terrorists are rampaging through the streets of Venezuela, rioting everywhere in an effort to overthrow the government by force. They are armed with rocks, slingshots and firearms. They attack cars, make people leave their vehicles at gunpoint, shut down streets and roads with roadblocks and burning tires, attack government buildings and set them on fire, burn police cars to the ground, open fire on the opposition and even on their own people, attack the police, partly destroy government buildings, etc.
Why are they doing this? Because they lost an election and they can’t get their own way. This is the only way they can get into power, by violent overthrow of the government. So Venezuela is not collapsing, instead, fascists are trying to overthrow the government with violence.
Toyota Motor Co. said it would shut down its assembly operations in Venezuela due to the government’s foreign exchange controls that have crippled imports and made it impossible to bring in parts needed to build its vehicles.
The country’s other car manufacturers, including General Motors and Ford, haven’t even started operations this year, while waiting for needed parts to arrive.
This is true, but it’s not the government’s fault. Capital controls were put in to control capital flight because the rich and the business class were taking all of their money and moving it out of the country. That would be fatal for an economy so capital controls were put in. The government gives the private sector dollars so they can import products to sell on the market.
However, the capitalists lie and take the money and do not use it to import goods for human use. Instead, they use it for speculation or sink it into the black market. Instead of buying goods abroad and importing them to Venezuela, they buy Venezuelan oil and smuggle it to Colombia where they can sell it at a huge markup. They buy products cheaply on the open market and sell them for huge markups on the black market.
All of this has caused a horrible mess so the government has been limiting the access to dollars that it loans or gives to the private sector. That is why the car plant is shutting down. Sure, capital controls are a problem, but the capitalists caused it in the first place by not using the dollars like they said they would.
The oil field workers left years ago when the Chavez government cut oil workers’ pay.
Like Hell they left. All jobs in that sector are filled, and there are waiting lists for those cherished jobs.
Workers’ protests continue at Venezuela’s Puerto La Cruz refinery, in the northeastern state of Anzoátegui. The oil workers are requesting the payment of their contractual benefits. Workers gathered and had some meetings in the refinery and handed out fliers. These actions will continue until the authorities of state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) meet each of their requests. Oil workers complained that the oil industry has violated 80% of the current collective bargaining agreement.
This problem is a sad one. The truth is that the Venezuelan state which claims to be for the workers is not necessarily all that pro-worker. In other words, this socialist state all too often treats workers as lousy as the capitalists do. So the complaint here apparently is that the Left government abuses workers in the same fashion that capitalists do. Why this is a pro-opposition argument, I have no idea. They are basically arguing that this Left government is too rightwing!
[They] got a 40 % raise last year. So let’s see, they get a 40 % raise in 2010, and a 50 % raise in 2011, and meanwhile oil field workers, the ones who create the wealth the government uses to give these obscene pay raises to the military, are protesting low pay and lack of legal payments they are supposed to get.
Yeah, and the capitalists would treat these oil workers really great! They wouldn’t cut the workers’ pay to give more money to already rich people, now would they? Once again, the argument is that Venezuela sucks because the government is rightwing.
‘Brazil is becoming Argentina, Argentina is becoming Venezuela, and Venezuela is becoming Zimbabwe’
These are all lies. All of these countries are doing great under left-wing regimes. First of all, they have it backwards. Venezuela is the richest of the three, then Argentina, then Brazil. Brazil is rising, not falling. Argentina is improving, not failing. And Venezuela, one of the richest countries in Latin America, turning into the collapsed state of Zimbabwe? What a lie!
The oil workers who could, all left for Canada. That was about the time that the Alberta oil sands fields were coming on line. Those workers, and especially the engineers, are not going back to Venezuela any time soon.
That is not true, though surely one could make more in Alberta than in Venezuela. Nevertheless, oil workers jobs in Venezuela are filled beyond capacity.
Welcome to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, a country with the fifth largest oil reserves in the world and absolutely broke. It’s a remarkable achievement for Chavismo. A just-wow moment. Socialism is useless at everything except for smashing things in record time. There it excels. It’s hard to imagine that as late as the 1980s Venezuela had the highest standard of living in Latin America. But then in 1960 Detroit was the richest city in the world in per capita income. Now it’s well … Detroit.
More lies. First of all, Venezuela is not broke by any means. The government is flush with cash and the economy is booming right along as it has been since Chavez took over.
Venezuela has not destroyed or smashed anything other than maybe the outrageous wealth of the oligarchy.
Venezuela did not have the highest standard of living in Latin America in the 1980′s, and anyway, even if it did, 90% of the population lived in poverty and could only afford to eat one meal a day. 10% of the population was hoarding all the wealth. The model was not sustainable, and this is what led to Chavez taking over in the first place.
Cuba is helping the post-Chavez government to cope.
Another lie. It’s actually the other way around, kiddo. Venezuela helps keep Cuba afloat with cheap oil. Sad but true.
The violence against unarmed citizens is reminiscent of the April 11, 2002, bloodletting, when 17 individuals who were part of a peaceful opposition march in the streets of Caracas were similarly gunned down by snipers. That was the day the head of the military told Hugo Chávez that he would not move against the crowd and that he was removing Chávez from office. Chávez prevailed, in part due to U.S. dogma against “a coup” and in part because the opposition bungled what ought to have been a transition to democracy.
The only violence against unarmed people that is occurring is the fascist rioters throwing rocks and firing guns and slingshots at people. The fascist snipers have opened fire on crowds, killing two and wounding many others.
In 2002, a similar outrage occurred. The opposition fascists opened fire on Chavistas, killing many of them and wounding others, then they blamed it on the Chavistas!
Remember when Hitler burned down the Reichstag and then blamed the Communists? Same thing. The opposition press all went along with these lies and ran endless news broadcasts calling the Chavistas murderers for shooting their own people. All of the rightwing media outlets participated in a violent coup against the government and I am amazed that Chavez did not pull all of their broadcast licenses as traitors and put the owners in prison. Yet not one single paper or media broadcast outlet was closed down and the traitors were still allowed to peddle their lies. Then they all accused Chavez of being a dictator!
There was no transition to democracy because the opposition represents conservatives and conservatives always hate democracy. After the coup, the Congress was dissolved and the Supreme Court was shut down. The new coup government was a 100% dictatorship.
True, there were some military traitors in 2002, but Chavez has since removed almost all of the dirty traitors from the army. The sick US MSM has used this to scream that Chavez is “politicizing the military.” So show me one military on Earth that has no politics.
Obama is a friend of Venezuela and will oppose any attempt to overturn the tyranny.
Another lie. Actually, Obama has been very hostile to the Chavistas.
What we see today in El Salvador is a government heading in the opposite direction from those core principles. In 2000, El Salvador was ranked as the 11th-freest economy in the world, according to the annual Index of Economic Freedom co-published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. Today, it is 53rd and has registered declining scores in six of the 10 economic freedoms, including investment freedom, the management of public spending, labor freedom, and freedom from corruption. El Salvador’s performance in other world economic indices has also plummeted.
Society was a wreck in El Salvador in 2000. 2% of the population owns almost all of the wealth in the country. 90% are dirt poor and often do not have enough to eat and live in slums and shacks and there is a small beat down middle class of 8%. That’s what your “economic freedom” will get you.
Investment freedom is crap. It means investors’ rights are above those of all other members of society. Screw that.
Management of public spending is a lying metric. If public spending is very high, Heritage, that is against economic freedom somehow and Heritage gives you an F. If the government barely exists and hardly spends a nickel, Heritage calls that economic freedom and gives you an A. It makes no sense.
Labor freedom is another lie. It means that workers have the freedom to not to join labor unions. If almost all of the workforce is unionized, you get an F on labor freedom for some insane reason. If unions and striking are illegal, you get an A on labor freedom. It’s crazy.
El Salvador was corrupt then and it’s corrupt now. As a rule, rightwing governments are always more corrupt than Left regimes.
The deterioration in central and south America continues apace . There is an interesting pattern.
‘There are two Latin Americas right now. The first is a bloc of countries—including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela—that faces the Atlantic Ocean, mistrusts globalization and gives the state a large role in the economy. The second—made up of countries that face the Pacific such as Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia — embraces free trade and free markets.’
Yep, Mexico, Peru and Colombia are violent states with mass poverty, hunger, insurgency and vast gaps between the rich and poor, many without sewage treatment or running water. Chile is better, but it’s a mess. Chile is good for the top 1/3 of the population and terrible for the bottom 2/3 of the population. What’s so good about that? Why should I support that?
Further, Chile just elected a Left socialist so that statement isn’t even true. Also Peru just elected a Left-winger too, but his hands are pretty much tied. Mexico has a vast state sector and does not allow one penny of foreign investment in its energy sector. In other words, the group embracing free trade and free markets doesn’t exactly do that.
Globalization has been a catastrophe for the Third World. It was just a scam to by the First World to screw the Third World, steal their stuff, beggar and put them in debt forever, while screwing First World workers and replacing them with peons for pennies an hour in the Third World. To be against globalization simply means you have a brain.
Also, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are doing extremely well under various types of Left regimes. The state does not play a large role in the economy of either Brazil or Argentina.
Stifling bureaucracy, protectionist trade barriers, widespread corruption, lack of investment in infrastructure and the limited scope of economic reforms have been piling up like wood on a bonfire for a number of years. Inflation and weak government finances have provided the starter fluid and it maybe that lower demand for commodities will be the spark.
The divide has been developing for years. As Luhnow reports, ‘ A key moment in creating the two Latin Americas came in 2005, when Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela (then led by Mr. Chávez) lined up to kill the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas—a free-trade zone stretching from Alaska to Patagonia and promoted by President George W. Bush. Troubled by the FTAA’s demise, the Pacific Alliance set out to create its own free-trade area, eliminating tariffs on 90% of goods and setting a timetable to eliminate the rest.’
Bureaucracy and corruption are problems throughout the continent regardless of regime.
Protectionism is great for poor countries and bad for rich ones, so of course rich countries want to get rid of it.
Lack of investment in infrastructure is a horrible problem in the more rightwing Latin American countries where the state doesn’t believe in spending a nickel on anything. The Left regimes do a much better job on public infrastructure.
Inflation is a problem in Venezuela, but it was much worse before Chavez, and it’s the capitalists who are causing most of the inflation anyway in that country.
Lower demand for commodities is wishful thinking. What they mean is that the price of oil will go down because demand for oil will plummet. This will hurt Venezuela badly. Anyway, you think oil demand or prices are dropping anytime soon? Another wishful thinking lie.
The free trade agreements that Colombia, Chile, Peru, etc. have agreed in have bee great for the US and terrible for those countries. The agreements were catastrophes for labor and the environment.
The genius of the Left — Chavez’s for example — is that it destroys things from the inside out. They pervert religion, collapse the mores, abolish the family, shred the constitution and gradually expropriate the property. The differences from one day to the next are apparently imperceptible, but it is harder and harder to go back until finally there is no reversal of ‘progressive gains’ possible at all. The public is finally faced with the stark choice between chaos or authoritarianism. And most people will chose the Boss over the Mob.
More endless lies from the insane anti-Communist Right. Chavistas have not perverted religion, in fact, Chavez was a believing Christian. However, Chavez preached Liberation Theology, which is a Catholic movement for the poor whereas the Catholic Church has always been for the rich down there. Switching Catholicism from advocacy for the rich to advocacy for the poor I guess counts as perversion of religion?
Collapse the mores is a typical lie about the Left and Communism. Supposedly the Left opposes traditional morality and preaches decadence and degeneracy. It was never true anywhere, and all Communist regimes were actually rather conservative and puritanical. Abolish the family. This is another crazy anti-Communist lie from fanatics.
In general, even most Communists have not opposed the family unit, though there was some movement that way in the USSR in the 1920′s which Stalin quickly got rid of anyway.
Chavez has not shredded the Constitution. The old Constitution was everything for the rich and nothing for the poor. Chavez had the Constitution rewritten by a series of votes before the people to turn that equation around. Making the Constitution serve the poor instead of the rich apparently is shredding the document.
The Chavistas have not taken over much property. Some crooked businessmen were ordered to play fair or else. When they kept on lying, cheating and stealing, yes, they got expropriated. Some businesses that abused their workers were expropriated the enterprise was given to the workers to run for themselves.
Large landowners were sitting on vast swathes of land that lay fallow and was not under production. Venezuela needs to quit importing so much food and grow more of its own. The government told them to start cultivating their lands or else. Most of them gave the state the finger and refused to till their lands or use them productively. So the state expropriated their agricultural lands, but they were paid market value for them. The lands were then turned over to poor small farmers to grow crops on.
The chaos versus authoritarianism is what the Right is doing. They are creating chaos in the streets in hopes of terrorizing Chavista supporters into throwing the Chavistas out of office. In their place would be an opposition regime, which of course would be authoritarian. But it is the opposition that is causing this very chaos. If the people want the Chavistas to become authoritarian and crack down, whose fault is that? Who started the rioting anyway?
Most people are spurred into resistance by a crisis. But they remain lulled into complacency while the crisis remains imperceptible. Progressive tyranny benefits from image management, and takes great pains to keep crisis from view.
The most insidious thing about a secret police is its very secrecy, because the mayhem it wreaks is upon the intangibles, among things we call legitimacy. So it goes until only a facade is left. Until the day of death the victim is largely asymptomatic, except for a gradual weakening. When the onset comes he discovers that his immune system is completely gone and the end is sudden.
There are no secret police in Venezuela. In fact, there is the opposite – total freedom for the opposition, or too much freedom for them. The opposition is allowed to roam the streets in armed mobs, rioting everywhere, and the government barely even tries to stop them.
Sound like “progressive tyranny” to you? And what’s “progressive tyranny” anyway? It doesn’t even exist. Most progressive people are civil libertarians.
And Iran is allying itself with Venezuela.
Yep. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. They both hate the US, so they are allying with each other. Why is that surprising?
That told me how bad things are when Cuba is supporting Venezuela. The Soviets did the same thing with mining – Herbert Hoover had built this very profitable and efficient facility in the Ukraine, and the Bolsheviks ruined it.
Hoover was in power in the 1920′s when the Bolsheviks were in power so how could he have built anything? Anyway, mining was a disaster under the Czar and the mining sector actually worked extremely well in the USSR.
“Cuba is helping the post-Chavez government to cope.” A glimmer of gallows humor in a grim piece. Why do people keep trying socialism when its failure is entirely predictable?
Um, maybe because “socialist failure” is nothing but a gigantic lie?
So, Venezuela is thriving. That’s what I asked. Communism works! All those stories about the Gulag were not true.
Venezuela is doing very well. When people who lived under Communism are polled, most do say it works, or at least that it works better than capitalism. At worst, neither Communism nor capitalism really work. What do Gulags have to do with Venezuela?
Ken is right. Any day now the Glorious Revolution will succeed in Venezuela & Cuba. They’ll have meat and grain and good beer, and efficient cars and comfortable homes, short work weeks, and peaceful cities, and they’ll be exporting shiploads of goods throughout the world! You’ll see. You just have to Believe. And follow what Dear Leader tells you. You’ll see. Any day now…
Meanwhile, in The Real World, you’ll be shot in Cuba if you’re caught eating meat, that’s reserved for the Ruling Class. It’s a Workers Paradise.
Venezuelans already have plenty of meat, grain, and good beer. There are a vast number of cars in Venezuela. Chavez has dramatically improved the housing situation in that country.
I do not know about short work weeks, but when do capitalists ever give workers a short work week?
And yes, Cuba is a very peaceful country with a low crime rate.
And Venezuela indeed exports vast amounts of oil products to the world at large.
Nobody is shot in Cuba for stealing meat. Chicken is in good supply, as is fish. Pork is commonly eaten. Beef is in short supply, and people commonly kill farmers cows to eat the beef. This problem became so serious that now you have to show where you got that side of beef in your trunk. Meat is not reserved for the ruling class – all Cubans eat meat. And beef is not reserved for the ruling class either, and there is no ruling class in Cuba anyway.
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