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-- Hugo...doing it again.
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| Originally posted by Krypton Says you?  Dynamic. You know what it means? It means bringing about change. Are you gonna say Putin didn't change Russia smartass?  |
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| Originally posted by guerra-monstru Let us see. He said Putin and Hugo are both dynamic leaders. Both of these candidates are liked by their people just as much as the American's like Bush or the British Brown. Don't fall under what the media is trying to convince you of. there is nothing dynamic of Putin or Hugo. Both are failures and will be remembered as such. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Answer, dynamic means to bring about change. I was not commenting on the virtues of their policies. It'd be best not to tag on arguments to me which I never made. Putin and Chavez have brought about change, it's blatantly obvious. Need I explain further??? |
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| Originally posted by guerra-monstru he didn't bring change which was what I was saying. Neither did Hugo. |
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| Originally posted by guerra-monstru Sure go ahead? Change? Well the people continued to consume because they live in a capitalist nation(s) and they didn't have anything to do with the price of oil. They didn't bring about change. The change happened due to the people not because of the leaders. |
Bumpity boo...serious power consolidation continues. Seriously, tell me he's a populist.
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| Chavez takes over biggest gold mine in Venezuela: minister Nov 5 06:05 PM US/Eastern Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government will take over and nationalize La Cristinas, the biggest gold mine in the country owned by Canada's Crystallex, Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz said Wednesday. The move is part of leftist Chavez's socialist agenda that calls for nationalizing Venezuela's natural resources. Over the past year, he has taken over the electricity, oil, steelmaking, cement and telephone enterprises "This mine will be seized and managed by a state administration," Sanz said in a statement. The Cristinas mine, located in southeastern Bolivar state, is estimated to hold 16.9 million ounces of gold, in proven and potential reserves of the precious metal, according to Crystallex data. Since the start of the year, Venezuela has been withholding environmental permits that allow private companies to extract gold, in lieu of a law that will establish joint ventures with foreign companies with majority stakes by the Venezuelan state. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Bumpity boo...serious power consolidation continues. Seriously, tell me he's a populist. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Bumpity boo...serious power consolidation continues. Seriously, tell me he's a populist. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Could it possibly be about curtailing inflation caused by such heavy state nationalization? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka This is the epitome of the Golden Rule! He who owns the gold makes the rules. |
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| Originally posted by George Smiley In democracies we also have a similar saying: He who wins the election makes the rules! |
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| Anyway, how the hell can you justify a Canadian company getting rich off Venezuela's gold resources?!?!?!?!? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka I've never heard that saying. Even if there were a modicum of truth to that statement(which I'd question), it's hardly an apples-to-apples comparison to a guy like Chavez. |
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| How am I trying to do that? How do you suppose Crystallex gets rich by this? It certainly wouldn't explain their stock dropping by 25% on the news. |
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| Originally posted by George Smiley Surely the people of that country should be the ones to decide how their natural resources are used? |
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| Originally posted by Dupz and i'm sure it was a Venezuelan who signed a mutually agreeable contract allowing such companies to enter their country and mine their resources. bah! that foreign investment jargon is evil! |
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| Originally posted by George Smiley That's correct, one Venezuelan, not "the people of that country" as I said in my post above. |
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| Originally posted by Dupz but who's better to manage those resources? the owner of the land, or the collection of peasants on the street selling kebabs? Chavez is quickly turning his country into a North Korea - bankrupting his country for the sake of a halfwit and disproven ideology |
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| Originally posted by George Smiley In fact, please post me a report from a Venezuelan news source that criticises Chavez... |
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| You're criticising Chavez for allegedly planning to nationalise Venezuela's gold industry. You therefore must support a foreign country's company getting rich off Venezuela's natural resources. Surely the people of that country should be the ones to decide how their natural resources are used? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka I would expect to find none, which is case in point. I can find any newspaper in the U.S. that criticizes George Bush. We've discussed media censorship in Venezuela ad nauseum before. |
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| As Dupz pointed out, Venezuela had no problem letting them in to develop the resources and Venezuela was certainly already collecting a delicious royalty stream from said actions. |
) - a "socialist"! 
As soon as you heard the magic word, all reason and logic flew out of the room and you refuse to listen to any FACTS or TRUTHS about Venezuela because you got sucked into the lies spread by Venezuela's rich who despised Venezuela's wealth being spent in the poor and needy...
So we'll just turn a blind eye to his new, "All Chevez, all the Time!" TV station, wanting to jail the 'official opposition' (if there is such a thing) and accelerated land redistribution campaign that makes private property rights a thing of the past...
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| Originally posted by George Smiley Before Chavez, Venezuela was ruled by the elite for the elite. They all got a kick back from letting foreign companies milk Venezuela dry while the poor got nothing whatsoever. That is why you hate Chavez, not because you hate poor people, but because Venezuela's elite have carried out a very successful international propaganda campaign (esp in America) to portray Chavez as a dictator and, which really gave you a hard on ( ) - a "socialist"! As soon as you heard the magic word, all reason and logic flew out of the room and you refuse to listen to any FACTS or TRUTHS about Venezuela because you got sucked into the lies spread by Venezuela's rich who despised Venezuela's wealth being spent in the poor and needy... |
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| Chavez Ambitions in Venezuela May Fade With Oil Price (Update2) By Matthew Walter and Steven Bodzin Enlarge Image/Details Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The same tumbling oil prices that led OPEC to slash output last week threaten to send Venezuela's economy into a tailspin, and put an end to President Hugo Chavez's ambitions to expand his socialist revolution at home and abroad. To cope with plummeting oil revenue, the source of half the government's spending, Chavez may have to cut domestic handouts and foreign aid. The first items likely to go will be arms purchases from Russia, oil subsidies for Cuba, and job-creating local projects such as bridges and subways, economists say. ``You have a country with an oil boom, that doesn't know how to save, doesn't know how to set up productive industries that generate jobs, and goes into debt,'' said Elsa Cardozo, a professor of political science and international relations at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. ``Then oil prices fall and the party ends.'' Venezuela may be poised to repeat the economic collapse it suffered in the 1980s at the end of its last oil boom. Former President Carlos Andres Perez, employing policies similar to Chavez's, lavished petrodollars on public works projects, foreign aid and nationalizations in the late 1970s, setting the stage for a 1983 currency devaluation and spending cuts that sent millions of Venezuelans into poverty. 'Most Vulnerable' ``Venezuela is now more dependent than ever on oil,'' said Jose Toro Hardy, a former board member of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. ``Venezuela is the most vulnerable country in all of Latin America to a falling oil price.'' Chavez is already spending beyond his means, posting a $7 billion budget deficit in the first half of 2008, a period of unprecedented oil prices, on a $63.9 billion budget for the year. Economists' estimates of the minimum oil price Chavez needs to sustain his economic policies range from $120 a barrel to $65. Oil fell 93 cents, or 1.4 percent, to a 17-month low of $63.22 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Below $80 a barrel, it's likely that Chavez will devalue the bolivar for the first time since 2005, sparking a surge of inflation and a drop in real wages because of Venezuela's reliance on imports, said Gustavo Garcia, an economics and public finance professor at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion, a Caracas business school. Oil Shock ``Depending on the intensity of the shock, it could be a situation without precedent in Venezuelan history,'' said Tamara Herrera, managing director at Caracas-based economic consulting company Sintesis Financiera. Venezuela's benchmark 9.25 bond due in 2027 fell 20.5 cents to 50.79 cents on the dollar from 79 cents a month earlier, pushing the yield to 18.83 percent, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The government, which has historically calculated its spending plans based on a conservative forecast for oil prices, is projecting a $60-a-barrel average for the 2009 budget, and output well above today's level. Oil options contracts to sell crude at $50 by December almost tripled Oct. 24. Venezuela, which pledged last week to trim 129,000 barrels a day from its production as part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' 1.5 million barrel-a-day cut, is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S. and the biggest petroleum exporter in the Americas. Aid, Arms Slashing foreign aid and arms purchases, while diminishing Chavez's influence in the region, will have the smallest political cost domestically, said Alejandro Grisanti, director of Latin American analysis at Barclays Capital Inc. Venezuela spent $4.4 billion on 12 contracts for Russian weapons, the Kremlin said. The agreements include deals to buy 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 50 military helicopters and 24 Su-30 fighter jets, according to a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report. Russia last month offered Venezuela a $1 billion line of credit to buy more weapons. The president has also used his oil-fed largesse to offer subsidized financing for poor countries in the Caribbean and Central America to buy Venezuelan oil products. As of July, the 18 countries in his Petrocaribe alliance were receiving up to 200,000 barrels of oil a day. Domestically, Chavez may have to end his drive to nationalize businesses in the so-called strategic sectors, Grisanti said. The government so far has swept up the country's biggest telephone, electricity and steel companies, among others, at an estimated cost of $11 billion, according to Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based economic consultant. Tripled Spending Chavez probably won't cut spending on the social ``missions'' that have brought services such as health care and adult education into some of the country's most impoverished areas and which have been key to securing electoral victories. Chavez has more than tripled total government spending in the past five years. Chavez says he has enough resources between the central bank's $39 billion of international reserves and other off- budget assets to weather the global economic slowdown sapping demand for oil and dragging down prices. ``Some people are uniting behind falling oil prices thinking that now Chavez will fall,'' he said on state television on Oct. 24. ``I want to remind them that we arrived with $7 oil, and if it drops to $7 again this revolution won't fall, it will only get stronger.'' Reserves Even so, the government will probably have to burn through some of the assets it accumulated during the past three years as oil climbed toward a record $147.27 on July 11. Chavez's National Development Fund, an off-budget discretionary account that's soaked up $38 billion in PDVSA earnings and central bank reserves since 2005, will for now lose the benefit of a windfall tax that kicks in when Venezuelan crude rises above $70 a barrel. The government will probably tap the fund for operations instead of infrastructure projects, Sintesis Financiera's Herrera said. Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez has called for an ``austerity'' budget in 2009. Economists say the biggest concern is a currency devaluation, which would reduce Venezuelans' buying power, pushing many people who have joined the growing middle class into poverty. The government is expected to devalue the official exchange rate 26 percent to 2.7 bolivars per dollar sometime next year, according to the median forecast of nine economists in a Bloomberg survey. More Poverty ``Poverty will inevitably grow,'' said Pedro Benitez, a professor of economic history at Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. ``In the past, governments have preferred to devalue than to cut spending.'' That may hit Chavez's approval rating a time when high crime and inflation are already causing Venezuelans to question his policies, said Jose Antonio Gil Yepes, a director at Caracas-based pollster Datanalisis. The president's approval rating was 58 percent in September, down from 75.4 percent in May 2006, according to the monthly survey of 1,300 residents nationwide, he said. The poll has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points. ``If oil prices implode, the model he's trying to build implodes,'' Gil Yepes said. ``Everything he's built is based on subsidies, which are financed by oil.'' |
Well let's not take Venezuela out of the context of the wider economic crisis the world is going through (thanks mainly to the capitalist policies of America and those countries that follow that ideology like my country). I don't know this for a fact, and please feel free to correct me, but I would say poverty has got worse the world over since the credit crunch began to take effect. Let's not also forget the propaganda drive that has been so successful in brainwashing people like you all over America and further afield, often just by using the term "socialist". For example, you made the claim earlier that Chavez has nationalised "every industry under the sun". That's quite clearly not true and there is no way you will ever be able to back that statement up (and in your next post you will admit as such). But that demonstrates what effect the propaganda has had around the world - what message does that send to any businesses looking for foreign investment? Stay away from Venezuela. And that will also have an effect on employment, and therefore poverty as well.
But you asked for specific benefits Venezuelans have received as a result of Chavez' policies, well here is a summary of the "Bolivarian Missions":
- 1.5m illiterate poor Venezuelans taught to read, write and do maths
- 60,000 high school drop outs taught grammar, geography and second language
- 1000s of clinics to provide universal health service to poor communities
- 1000s of new housing units planned for the poor
- Restoration of communal land titles and human rights to indigenous communities
- Land reform giving access to poor people (130 of whom were assassinated by the American supported opposition)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Venezuela is perfect, because it quite clearly isn't, and would I want to live there? Would I fuck! But you can't say Chavez is merely a power mad dictator hiding behind a façade of social populism. He genuinely wants to reform Venezuela to make it a fair society for those not born into money (like the American supported opposition) and he's trying his best to achieve that and it's never gonna be an easy task when you have a rich and powerful opposition controlling the vast majority of information in and out of the country, and they have the backing of America who supported the undemocratic coup of 2002 - just like they did with practically every other democracy in Latin America that wanted to fight for social change - America made sure the wish of the people was denied and instead helped to install a right wing fascist dictator...is that what you also want for Venezuela? Because that's what Bush has been striving for for the last 6 years, let's hope Obama brings more ethical and less hypocritical foreign policy to the White House...
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| Originally posted by George Smiley For example, you made the claim earlier that Chavez has nationalised "every industry under the sun". That's quite clearly not true and there is no way you will ever be able to back that statement up (and in your next post you will admit as such). |
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| But you asked for specific benefits Venezuelans have received as a result of Chavez' policies, well here is a summary of the "Bolivarian Missions": - 1.5m illiterate poor Venezuelans taught to read, write and do maths - 60,000 high school drop outs taught grammar, geography and second language - 1000s of clinics to provide universal health service to poor communities - 1000s of new housing units planned for the poor - Restoration of communal land titles and human rights to indigenous communities - Land reform giving access to poor people (130 of whom were assassinated by the American supported opposition) |
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| But you can't say Chavez is merely a power mad dictator hiding behind a façade of social populism. He genuinely wants to reform Venezuela to make it a fair society for those not born into money... |
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| (like the American supported opposition) and he's trying his best to achieve that and it's never gonna be an easy task when you have a rich and powerful opposition controlling the vast majority of information in and out of the country, and they have the backing of America who supported the undemocratic coup of 2002 - just like they did with practically every other democracy in Latin America that wanted to fight for social change - America made sure the wish of the people was denied and instead helped to install a right wing fascist dictator...is that what you also want for Venezuela? Because that's what Bush has been striving for for the last 6 years, let's hope Obama brings more ethical and less hypocritical foreign policy to the White House... |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Certainly even you are familiar with sarcasm and hyperbole. |
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| I asked how his nationalizations have directly helped the poor. Not simply his policies in general. For example, how does his taking over the gold industry provide direct benefits to the poor? Is he going to distribute gold nuggets to the populace? |
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| Can't I? Just as much as you can say he genuinely cares about the people, I can say he genuinely stands to benefit immensely on a personal level by pursuing his massive power grab. |
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| Yes. Everything is Amerikka's and Bush's fault. Don't worry, Obama's gonna fix it up real good like. |
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| Originally posted by George Smiley It may have been tongue in cheek, but your ideas of exactly how much Chavez has nationalised is way out of proportion, and that is directly because of the propaganda drive that your government so actively supports |
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| Well how do you reckon they paid for all that?! That was the whole point of nationalising the industries that have been! |
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| Of course, you can ay what you want, but I can back up what I say |
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| [They're not making life easy for Venezuela are they? |
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