Venezuelan socialism and the boiled frog

There's an old folk tale that says if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out right away to escape the danger. But if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with cool water, and then you gradually heat the water to boiling, the frog will not become aware of the threat until it is too late.

The frog's survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes.

http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15501911

 

Bit of a soft target isn’t it?

I mean we’ve just had a Hugo Chavez thread –
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=390680&f=36

It seems to me that the right are jumping up and down on Chavez and waving there hands in a desperate attempt to distract people from their seeming inability to defend their own ideas.

 

No, everyone is jumping down Chavez's throat for being an ego centric, power hungry asshole.

Considering Venezuela has the 3rd highest inflation rate in the damn world running for several years now and isn't expected to go back to growth this year, I'd say the right just defended its ideas.

Shouldn't there be a rule of thumb not to trust anyone who's best friends with Fidel Castro?

 

Frog Soup is delicious.

 

It seems the socialists are jumping up and down and waving their hands in a desperate attempt to derail any thread on Chavez.

If you have nothing to say on the topic please don't troll my thread.

 

:smilielol5:
Pretty hilarious, Americans criticizing another country's economic leadership...


ZW

 

America's inflation rate isn't 40% and we're back to growth.

 

Growth for corporations in foreign markets. Still 10% unemployment.

WTF do you think we have been doing funding counter-insurgency operations in Latin America for the last, oh 30 years or so, fighting terrorists? spreading Democracy? Fuck no, Resources my friend. Same reason we invaded SE asia...and covertly funded death squads in central America and Columbia... That Chavez has somehow resisted outside influence and be elected by popular vote (unlike nearly all neighboring country's) is remarkable in itself.
BTW it's when the " have's" get there by creating far too many "have not's" that I have a problem with.

ZW

 

What resources does Laos and Guatemala have? It isn't about resources there, it was an effort to support any regime no matter how brutal they were as long as they were anti communist and on our side.

Also, all countries in South and central America have had fair popular votes, even Columbia in it's last election was deemed fair by international observers.

It's not the 1970's anymore, time to get with the news.

Notice how Chavez is best friends with the one guy who's country hasn't had a free election in over 50 years.

 

Ask Shell oil about Laos...and Columbia...Also regarding Latin America, Replace "anti-communist" with "anti-labor" or "anti-native" and you're getting closer. Check the tags on your fucking t-shirts, Cheap labor is also a resource. Productive land too, ask Dole, Chiquita.

Oh, and don't forget about the lucrative drug trade.
Also, US military aid to Columbia is second only to Israel.
Got's ta keep them Narco-terrorists beat down. We can't be havin' competition.
or popular uprisings...

You don't think we know how to influence a "fair" election without getting caught?
That's why it is so remarkable Chavez was elected at all.

Always a bad guy to go after huh? Check the Monroe Doctrine if you want the bottom line on US Imperialism. We have been after Cuba and Latin America for a long fucking time.

And what purpose does this comment serve?
Oh I get it, the old guy thing...

Time to learn some history, punk.

ZW

 

Paranoid enough are we? Yes America is just interfering with every election in the world, Harper was also elected because of us.

You need to learn some history dad,

The Monroe doctrine was passed in a time when America had almost no power. We vaguely even kept a standing federal army at the time. The only reason it ever held up at the time was because Britain supported it. Not to mention the fact newly independent latin America greatly supported the Monroe doctrine when it was announced since it had the British naval backing to support it.

AMERICA IS THE GREAT SATAN, oh noes.

 

Comments like these is why this forum is a waste of time.

out

 

Mad

In what way has the right ‘defended’ its ideas just by pointing out the failings of Hugo Chavez?

What right wing ideas are you talking about?

I mean the statement doesn’t seem to make sense since it doesn’t take account of context or circumstance.

Again this seems to highlight the problem that the right can’t actually defend their ideas.

*

Hipstatic

LOL – and exactly how have the thread on Chavez been ‘derailed’, the other one is open to replies as is this one. Unless you think that any thread that doesn’t go exactly the way you want is ‘derailed’, I can’t see how you can make that claim.

My question is what is the purpose of the thread? What’s the theme?

Well the use of socialism in the title and socialists in your reply seems to indicate you’re trying to highlight failings in left wing ideas by somehow trying to claim Hugo Chavez personifies these failings (and it certainly seems to be how Mad has seen it).

The problem is that there are many on the left that are deeply suspicious or disappointed with Chavez. To me he’s a demagogue and his actions aren’t those of a socialist, although the vocabulary of socialism is often used to describe them.

I’m not a fan of Hugo Chavez but I don’t think the way to try and ‘defeat’ him is by just blindly supporting the right wing ‘opposition’ the very same groups that have been exploiting the Venezuelan system for years (which was basically what the Bush Admin policy seems to have been)
In my view the best thing would be to undermine Chavez’s base by backing the real left.

Also on reading the piece, its about what are seem as move into repression by the Chavez government (well documented by Human Rights Watch) and again this seems to be more about Chavez personally rather than anything to do with left wing ideas so once again why your emphasis on it being ‘socialism’?

 

Alright, someone defend Chavez without either:

1. Bringing up America
2. Saying in some way he's the least of 2 evils

This is what I want that nobody has done yet.

 

Chávez adopted the term Socialism of the 21st century. After winning re-election in December 2006, President Chávez said, "Now more than ever, I am obliged to move Venezuela's path towards socialism

 

By having the national assembly pass an enabling act for him.

 

LOL! Calm down Balbus. For somebody who pretends that the topic isn't worth discussing, it sure seems to have you all worked up.

Yet Bush had many right wing critics too, does that mean he wasn't right wing? If can't you come up with a better argument than that you are going to look a bit desperate.

Its ironic how often the people who tell you to learn some history actually know very little of it themselves.

The Monroe Doctrine was actually an anti-imperialist doctrine. It said that the US opposed any European colonisation of countries in the Americas.

So yes, it is time to learn some history.

There is no oil in Laos and if you can't even spell Colombia properly I doubt you know much about it.

 

Actually a quick search shows copper, gold, tin and bauxite are the only resources Laos has in great enough quantities that it's trying to mine, and it doesn't even rank in the top 10 of any of them.

 

Not to pile on ,but.........

Not even close to being accurate, but who cares right ? you're just trying to make your biased point.

Colombia didn't even make the top 10 in US weapons sales.

The top purchasing countries in 2009 were United Arab Emirates ($7.9 billion), Afghanistan ($5.4 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($3.3 billion), followed by Taiwan ($3.2 billion), Egypt ($2.1 billion), Iraq ($1.6 billion), NATO ($924.5 million), Australia ($818.7 million) and South Korea ($716.6 million)


Comments like this is why this forum is a waste of time, one side provides facts, while they other side makes them up as they go.

 

"In 1964, after Vietnam was divided into North and South, and the contrived Gulf of Tonkin incident, several U.S. aircraft carriers were stationed offshore of Vietnam and the 'war' was started. Every day jet planes would take off from the carriers, bomb locations in North and South Vietnam, and then using normal military procedure when returning would dump their unsafe or unused bombs in the ocean before landing back on the carriers. Safe ordnance drop zones were designated for this purpose away from the carriers.
"Even close-up observers would only notice many small explosions occurring daily in the waters of the South China Sea and thought it was only part of the 'war.' The U.S. Navy carriers had begun Operation Linebacker One, and Standard Oil had begun its ten year oil survey of the seabed off of Vietnam. And the Vietnamese, Chinese and everybody else around, including the Americans, were none the wiser. The oil survey hardly cost Standard Oil a nickel, the U.S. taxpayers paid for it."

Marshall Douglas Smith. (2001). Black Gold Hot Gold, Ch. 3 So twenty years later and 57,000 Americans and half a million Vietnamese dead, Standard Oil had enough data and the war in Vietnam could end. Nelson Rockefeller's personal assistant, Henry Kissinger, represented the U.S. at the Vietnam/Paris Peace talks and won a Nobel Peace Prize in the bargain.
After the dust had settled from the war, Vietnam divided their offshore coastal area into numerous oil lots and allowed foreign companies to bid on the lots, with the proviso that Vietnam got a percentage of the action. Norway's Statoil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia, Germany and Australia all won bids and began drilling within their areas. Strange it was that none of them struck oil. However, the lots which Standard Oil bid for and won proved to have vast oil reserves. Their extensive undersea seismic research appears to have paid off.