how about all the factories threatened with closure being put under workers controll and productivity increasing massivly?
Factories are threatened with closure only when they are uneconomic. Incidently Hugo Chavez's socialist policies have almost wrecked the Venezulan economy. That is why around 100,000 people have marched against his regime, several times and why general strikes have taken place demanding he resign. Also Hugo Chavez came to power in a coup, he also only just scrapped through in an election a few years after the coup. He may have millions of supportors in Venezula, but the majority of the population including ordinary workers don't want him in power. Its a bit like Cuba, most Cuban's hate Castro, that is why so many of them risk their lives trying to get to the USA on flimsey rafts. Florida is full of Cubans who have fled the Castro regime, and the majority of them are poor working class people, not the rich elite who once ruled Cuba. Quite simply the dream of socialism turns sour very quickly once it is put into practice.
Thats like saying a Russian defector lie about the ex USSR internal conditions becouse hes a defector and traitor, same could be said about the jews who fleed Germany before Hitler started to round them up.
Germans risk theyr life to flee into west germany during the cold war. I wonder why i mean East germans lived likes kings with all kinds of freedoms.
Chavez isn't a commie in the same way as Castro. For one thing he's not into state control of all business. Also when castro and guevara came to power they carried out many executions of the ex ruling class/counter revolutionaries. Chavez was kidnapped and taken into exile, in a cia backed millitary coup. When the new govt were being sworn in, arch bishops and captains of industry toasting eachother, the presidential guard arrested them and put them in the palace cellars. When he came back from exile, he did not execute the counter revolutionaries. Chris, that film you mentioned: "inside the coup" by and irish film crew. Very good, people who talk about chavez should see it. I don't approve of all chavez does, like selling indigenous people's land to big mining corporations.
Bloody hell, and the majority of the left support this tyrant. If he is doing things like that the left should be dead against him, but wait a minute, he is anti-American and so in the eyes of the left he is on their side.